Recognizing patterns is one of the basic mathematical skills to learn about functions, modeling and mathematics itself. This paper aims to describe schema of pattern recognizing by student. The research subjects consisted of three students from 7th grade Junior High school who have different mathematical abilities and have never learned about the pattern previously. The data were collected from written and oral answers from the subjects when solving repeating and growing patterns in figure, number and problem solving. It was found that the three subjects tend to recognize patterns with numerical approaches, although these can lead them to incorrect answers. Subjects with high math ability were able to complete all tasks correctly and develop imagination in the given context. Subjects with moderate and low math ability solve the numerical representation of growing patterns problem by choosing student's convenient ways even it was not executed correctly. Even though the two different ways mentioned above were different, but both plays important roles in doing mistakes in recognizing patterns in problem solving representation. These findings recommend teachers to explore more examples of patterns in everyday life to improve students' pattern recognition skills. This support development of students' mathematical thinking and learning.