How many different ways can we sort ?
Today we looked at a book full of pictures of real farm animals. Using books like this is a great way to increase you child’s vocabulary. We can use many adjectives to describe what we see . There were FLOCKS of sheep. We saw PIGLETS , DUCKLINGS and CHICKS. What do you call a baby horse ? A horsling ?????? No… but I can see why she said that ! It is called a foal.
We also took our farm counters out and did some sorting . I tried to let the kids think of ways to sort the animals. They almost always guessed by color first. The other ways were a little more complicated. We can sort them by species or animal families. We can sort them by size – big or little animals.
We also did some patterning. First we did a simple ABAB pattern ( red animal, blue animal, red animal, blue animal ). Then we moved on to an AABAA pattern ( Red animal, red animal, blue animal, red animal, red animal.) The kids really surprised me by tackling some of the difficult patterns.
Then we played ” What is missing?” Games like this one helps the kids become better observers. I placed several animals on the table and took one away. The kids would then look and try to remember which one I took away. The funny part of this was they would cover their eyes and after taking an animal I would say ” Ok, Look back!” And every time they would look behind them instead of at the table ! It cracked me up. I realized that there were other ways that would be better to say ” Im ready you can look to see what is missing now..” But I LOVED that they all did this. HILARIOUS. ( Hey, I need entertainment sometimes too! )
