In early elementary school in most English-speaking countries children are taught "patterning," which involves learning repetitive patterns of colors or shapes (e.g., red, blue, green, red, blue, green). The present study was designed to test the effectiveness of patterning instruction when compared to equal amounts of instruction in reading or mathematics, or social studies. Further, The effectiveness of using more complex patterns was also tested. The authors used: (1) symmetrical patterns--gray, blue, pink, pink, blue, gray; (2) patterns that had increasing numbers of one element--red, tan, red, tan, tan, red, tan, tan, tan; (3) arbitrary repeating patterns--white, green, black, brown, yellow, white; and (4) patterns that showed an object rotating through 6 or 8 positions. Results of the study indicate that this patterning instruction involved patterns that were more complex than those used in conventional patterning instruction; the instruction continued all year; and required individual mastery of each pattern before moving on to the next. A gain of even two months in grade equivalents has great practical significance to educators, and the patterning children often made gains much larger than that. In addition, long-term instruction on and mastery of increasingly complex patterns can lead to substantially improved performance on some standardized tests of reading and mathematics, but not all. Tables are appended.