Pattern Parade

What your child learns

Patterns are one of the first steps toward algebra. Pattern Parade covers:

• Repeating patterns. AB (bear, bunny, bear, bunny), then AAB, ABB, ABC and AABB.
• The repeating part. When a pattern is tricky, the game draws a box around each repeat so your child can see the core that keeps coming back.
• Patterns that aren't about color. Big and small band members, and flags with a circle, triangle, square or star.
• Fixing a mistake. One band member is in the wrong spot, and your child taps the one that doesn't fit.
• Growing patterns. Balloons go 1, 2, 3, 4, so what comes next?
• Skip counting. Drums with 10 dots count by 10s, stars with 5 points count by 5s, and ducks with 2 feet count by 2s.

Every band member plays a note when it marches, so each pattern can be heard as well as seen.

How it works

Tap Play! and the band marches onto the street. Each member plays as it passes, Tempo reads the pattern aloud, and an empty spot with a question mark waits at the end. Your child taps the band member who belongs there from the big buttons at the bottom. A round is 6 patterns, and the speaker button replays the pattern any time.

The Route button shows the 12 stops of the parade:

Levels and how it adapts

The game keeps track of which kinds of patterns your child handles well and brings back the tricky kinds more often. Two right answers in a row adds another choice. A miss takes one away, so the next pattern is a little easier.

Wrong answers teach rather than scold. After a first miss, the band plays the pattern again with each repeat boxed in color. On growing and counting stops, little arrows marked +1, +2, +5 or +10 hop from one member to the next. After a second miss, the right choice glows and Tempo explains it, for example "40 and 10 more is 50." There are no timers and no way to lose.

The title screen has two settings. Ages 4-5 starts stop 1 with just 2 choices and counts from the beginning (10, 20, 30, 40). Ages 6-7 opens the first four stops right away, uses up to 4 choices, asks for three spots in a row, grows some balloon patterns by 2, and starts skip counting from bigger numbers like 60 or 25.

A round with no mistakes earns 3 stars, one or two mistakes earns 2, and more earns 1.

The band, stickers and the daily parade

The band starts with a bear on the drum and a bunny on the horn. Each stop your child finishes for the first time adds a new player, up to 12 more, from a duck with a bell to a panda on the drum.

Stickers go into the Sticker Book shared by all our learning games: one for the first parade, one for reaching stops 3, 6, 9 and 12, one now and then for a perfect parade, and one for Today, a daily parade of 8 mixed patterns that is the same for everyone, with a streak flame.

Tips for grown-ups

• Make a sound pattern: clap, stomp, clap, stomp. Ask what comes next, then let your child make one for you.
• Look for patterns on shirts, fences, tiles and in songs, and ask "What part repeats?"
• Line up toys in a pattern with one mistake and see if your child can find it, like the Oops! stop.
• Count shoes by 2s, fingers by 5s and toes by 10s around the family.

Privacy and safety

Pattern Parade has no ads, no accounts, no chat and no tracking, and nobody types a name. Stars, stickers and the band your child builds are saved only on your device. The only links go to our other learning games and the Sticker Book.

Questions