Thursday, March 8, 2012

All "sorts" of Patterns! Making Math FUN!

We love to sort ANYTHING around our house!  And simple sorting activities are great ways to bridge over into addition and other math skills.  I'm a bit OCD when it comes to organizing anything!  We have a bin for just balls, just trucks, legos and so on!  And I look at my "disorder" as a great way to teach my children "sorting" skills during clean up time.  But to make it a formal and much, more fun learning opportunity for my kiddos, I came up with a few lesson for sorting.  And you never know, after a week of lessons on sorting, your kiddos might have helped you organize your WHOLE house!

We have a BILLION trucks...I'm not kidding!  So one day, our lesson was to sort them by color.


I also invite Jackson to help sort our laundry and unload the silverware bucket from the dishwasher.  Helps mommy and helps my lil learner at the same time!  Perfect!

Got Goldfish?  Well you just have a great sorting lesson waiting for you and your kiddo!  I am a proud Momma whenever Jackson decides to sort out his Goldfish Crackers by color before he eats them for his snack.  He also has done this when his gummy snacks!  But he didn't learn this sorting concept over night!  One of my very first sorting/addition lesson with him was using the Smores Goldfish (which are to DIE for...so yummy)  I just cut out 3 "sorting circles" using colored construction paper, then laminated them, of course!  Check out our video, to help it make more sense:
Then our lesson led to addition...which now, I wish I would have done on a whole different day/lesson.  That was ALOT for one lil brain to understand in one lesson and those SMELLY wipe markers didn't help!

 He still loves to get our his "sorting circles" when we have Smores Goldfish for a snack!

Sorts can also led to understanding the concept of patterns.  Sort whatever first, build patterns next.  Here are some patterns we made with snacks (of course!)

 And the good ole paper chains are always fun to make and then just to decorate!


With St. Patty's Day coming up, buy a box of Lucky Charms and have your kiddo sort the marshmallows!  Fun with Food always makes lil one's learning more fun!

Happy Learning!

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