As a step toward developing more controlled studies into children's language, this study attempted to develop standard stimuli to elicit eight basic sentence patterns from kindergarten children. Four stimuli were developed for each pattern. Each stimulus consisted of a stick-figure picture, a description of the picture, and a question or direction which required a verbal response from the child. Individual interviews using the 32 stimuli were held with each of the 190 children in the study. From every child, the stimuli elicited the following patterns: (1) subject-verb, (2) subject-verb-subjective complement, (3) subject-verb-object, and (4) questions. Three additional patterns were each elicited from all but nine children. Chi square tests revealed no significant differences in sex, age, educational background of parents, or birth order between the group of children from whom the expected patterns were elicited and the group from whom the expected patterns were not elicited. Further study is recommended in which the stimuli are used with children from different socioeconomic neighborhoods and with younger children. (Author/LK)