Easy Poke a Pattern Activity for Preschoolers

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Preschoolers love patterns and this poking activity is the perfect invitation with an easy set up that will have your child wanting to poke more and more.

My four year old loved playing with the different patterns!

Patterns are an easy skill to teach at home and carry through in their every day life and play.

Pattern activities help preschoolers build their fine motor skills and enhance thinking and predictability skills.

For This Pattern Activity for Preschoolers You Will Need:

a medium sized cardboard box – we used one of our many amazon boxes that have arrived regularly this year with spending all this time at home!
white paper to cover the box
markers in assorted colors
toothpicks

Poke a pattern in a box and work on fine motor, critical thinking, early math and colors with this simple activity for preschoolers at home.

As always, I love using materials that we already have on hand to create simple set ups for my children.

Set Up Your Poke a Pattern Activity

To start with, I took our cardboard box and flipped it upside down, covering it with white paper.

I then created different colored dots in a variety of different patterns, using four different colors.

For the poking aspect of this pattern activity, I grabbed some toothpicks out of our pantry and used markers to color the ends of them for my preschooler.

I arranged them in a little container for easy access beside the box.

Check out this post for another activity idea to create using toothpicks!

Poke a Pattern Activity for Preschoolers

My four year old knew exactly what to do when she sat down.

There is always so much excitement and anticipation at being able to poke something for children!

I encouraged my preschooler to use a proper pincer grip on the toothpicks while she was picking them up and poking the pattern on the box – great as well as challenging fine motor activity!

Developing your child’s fine motors skills allows them to gain strength and ease when it comes to manipulating different everyday objects such as paintbrushes, buttons, knobs, zippers and pencils, etc.

Check out this post for a quick and simple activity to set up for your toddler or preschooler to continue to encourage those fine motor skills too!

My preschooler loved this pattern activity.

She was able to complete it independently with very little instruction from me.

It was such a fun and easy activity to reinforcing not only patterns, but colors and fine motor skills for preschoolers!

At the end of the activity, I sat down with her and asked her a few question about her completed work such as “which pattern did you like the best?” and “what would come next in the pattern?”

This was such a nice transition to end the pattern activity and gain insight into my preschoolers critical thinking skills.

Next time, she said that she wanted to create the patterns herself on the box!