Classification Game

Materials You Need: Several different types of small items, whatever may be easily available to you, for example - paper clips of different colours, pencils of different colours, pasta of different shapes, cereals of different types, leaves from different types of trees (different in shape).

What You Can Do Together: Collect all the similar items (such as the leaves) in one pile on a table or the floor.  Create an atmosphere in which the child will be interested in them. You can say something like "Wow, what do we have here - a bunch of different leaves ...!" and use your curious facial expressions to arouse the child's curiosity. Allow them to explore them a bit, then encourage them to sort the items in different ways. With younger children, you might just say "Let's put some of them together. Which ones would you like to put together?" and then comment, for example, "Oh, I see you put some big leaves together. Shall we put the small ones together also?" Older children might be encouraged to sort according to different criteria. For example, by putting "Green paper clips on one side and red on the other". Praise your child when they try and talk as much as possible while the activity is taking place, “Ah, you took the red one. You put it with other reds”. Resist the urge to fix what the child does - it is not at this age a "mistake." Instead, just describe what the child is doing - for example: “Oh, a yellow one with red ones”. Depending on the age, you can offer the child smaller items or offer items whose differences are harder to notice.

This is easiest to do at home, but if you have access to outdoor space, you might collect leaves, seeds, or other natural objects and think of different ways to sort those.  

What Your Child is Learning: This activity promotes your child’s cognitive development by sorting and pairing things.