Lesson 3 of 8 3 min read Free course

Finish the Pattern

Spot the pattern and predict what comes next. Finding and continuing patterns is at the heart of what computers do.

Play

Look at the row. What comes next?

Apple, apple, banana, apple, apple, banana, apple, apple… what comes next?

For the grown-up

Predicting the next item from a pattern is exactly what an AI does when it guesses your next word or the next song. Patterns are everywhere in code.

For the grown-up

This is a free activity 3 of 8 in Coding Games for Kids: Free Puzzles to Learn to Code — Eight free coding games children play right in the browser — steer a robot, spot the bug, finish the pattern, sort the boxes — each one teaching a real idea behind every programming language. No account, nothing to install. You read the one-line prompt aloud and your child taps the answer; there is nothing to install, the child needs no account of their own, and nothing they do is stored.

Tip: These games are a free taster. Let your child play the ones they enjoy in any order; a few minutes at a time is plenty. When they want more, the paid courses for their age go deeper.

A few minutes at a time is plenty, and doing the same activity again is good — repetition is how these first ideas stick. When your child is ready for short sentences and their own typing, the paid courses for older ages carry on from here. See how we handle children's data on our privacy page.