Patterns inquiry

Shrini was stringing pony beads to make necklace for herself. I thought this might be a good opportunity to practice patterns.
Me : Can you make a pattern?
Shrini: This is a pattern.
Me : These colors seem pretty random to me. Let us do Pink, white, green, pink,white, green. OK?
She obliged a couple of times and then resumed with random order.
Me : Don't you want to continue with the pattern?
Shrini: This IS a pattern, mom. See, Stripes!

Do you see her stripes pattern? :)

Simple Provocation : Rings and Sticks

The kids notice patterns around them all the time. It is mostly identification of a particular pattern like stripes, zigzag or spiral. But the concept  that pattern is anything that repeats or follows a definite rule is not understood by them.
I'm curious to see if they will discover it on their own, given the right kind of provocations.
So, I set up a tray with some colorful rings and sticks from a Hape toy and presented them a few images of patterns.
Sid tried to copy and build the art with concentric circles. He missed blue rings that were in the picture and didn't want to proceed further. So I suggested him to try zig zag. Immediately he found that zig zag has triangles in them. But did he notice that the triangles repeated? Alas, no!
The sticks then turned into alphabets, musical instruments etc and the activity came to an end.

Here is a short video of the kids working with the provocation set up.