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13 Everyday Activities to Teach Preschoolers About Sorting and Grouping

Young children love grouping and sorting activities, so teaching kids these valuable skills can be fun and easy to integrate into their play.

Read on to discover 13 easy, hands-on sorting activities.

What are Sorting Activities?

A sorting activity – or grouping activity – is any activity that requires a child to identify what a number of items (whether pictures or objects) have in common.

The child has to find the common property that forms a group or class of items.

For a young child, rather than “grouping common properties”, they are answering the basic question: “Which things belong together?”

Unlike the skill of matching, which is to “find the one that is just the same,” items that look different may still be part of the same group, or category.

An example of this is a pile of blocks of different shapes and sizes that share the property of having straight edges, as opposed to another pile of blocks that have curved edges.

Grouping is also different to pairing because as the name suggests, it is sorting items into groups of more than two.

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Why is Sorting Important for Preschoolers? 

Sorting, along with matching, pairing, seriation, sequencing and understanding cause-and-effect relationships, is an important cognitive skill in early childhood.

Sorting develops reasoning and thinking skills in young children, even though they may not yet be able to verbalize why they are putting certain objects together. 

In order to group and sort, children must discriminate, reason, analyze and select in order to formulate groups. 

Children also learn that there is usually more than one way to group items.

While toddlers and preschoolers are in what Piaget termed the pre-operational phase of development, learning to sort is one of the skills that prepares children for entering the concrete operational phase. [source]

In this later stage, children will rely on grouping skills to understand classification systems of science, as well as set theory in mathematics. [source]

Classification allows people to organize knowledge.

How to Teach Children to Sort

Sorting is a skill that can be taught through simple play activities in the early years.

Here are some things to consider when teaching toddlers or preschoolers about sorting.

Integrating

While you should plan some grouping activities to practise the skill, make sure to take advantage of spontaneous opportunities as they arise, such as grouping while tidying up.

Try wherever possible to relate activities to real life, such as unpacking the groceries and sorting the fruit from the vegetables.

Integrate sorting activities into other activities.

Little girl organizing her stuffed animals in a box

Planning

Make sure the activities are suitable for children’s level of understanding. Activities that are too challenging do not foster learning.

Using Concrete Experiences

Use hands-on learning as much as possible. Sorting blocks according to their properties is a much better way to teach the concept of sorting than offering a worksheet with pictures.

Worksheets are not age-appropriate during the preschool years and offer little value.

Using Language

In order for a child to grasp the concepts you are teaching them, it’s important to use language throughout the activity to further their understanding.

Firstly, use these kinds of questions to explain to children what grouping is:

  • Can you show me the things that belong to the same family?
  • Show me which things belong together.

Talk about what they are doing while they are doing it so you can put words to their actions and understanding of the concepts.

  • It looks like you are putting all the red ones and all the blue ones there.
  • I see you are putting all the fruits in this basket and all the vegetables in that basket.

Young children may not be able to verbalize why they have put things in the same category as they may just intuitively know.

By asking questions about why they belong together, such as “why is this group different”, children can learn to verbalize their reasons.

Varying Difficulty

There are different ways to present sorting activities, based on your children’s age and current level of understanding.

A toddler won’t be able to sort picture cards into groups of fruits or vegetables or tell you what the common attribute is, but an older child can.

Make the activity easier by telling kids what the group is, and asking them to add to or remove items from the category:

  • Put all the fruits in this basket.
  • This basket should only have fruits in it – take out the ones that don’t belong.

Make it more challenging by asking them to identify the common quality themselves by saying “show which things belong together.”

How a child categorizes will depend on their age and maturity. 

When sorting buttons, for example, younger children may sort according to colour or size, whereas older children may sort according to shape, material or how many holes the buttons have.

13 Grouping and Sorting Activities for Preschoolers

Here are some simple sorting and classifying games and activities to try at home or at school with young kids.

1. Tidy-Up Songs

Use clean-up time to practise categorizing daily – at home and at school. 

Teach children to pack items away in groups that make sense – construction play toys in one area, books on the shelf, crayons and pencils in their containers, etc.

2. Animal Sort

Use animal cards or make small cards with cut-outs of animals and ask children to sort them according to groups, such as birds, insects and mammals.

3. Doll House Rooms

Using a doll’s house, ask children to sort the furniture according to which room it belongs in. 

Little girl playing with her doll house

4. Household Objects

Take several items from two rooms around the house and ask your child to group them. Here’s an example:

  • Bathroom – toilet roll, hand towel, toilet brush, soap, mirror
  • Bedroom – pillow, teddy bear, item of clothing, bedside lamp

5. Buttons

Sort buttons any way you can – by colour, size, shape, number of holes or material (plastic, metal, etc.) Sort them into plastic containers or egg cartons.

There are so many button activities to try with kids.

6. Blocks      

Sort out the block collection by colour, shape, or curved vs straight edges.

If you have various materials – such as foam, plastic and wood, mix them together and sort them that way.

Preschooler sorting blocks by color

7. Clothing Sort

If at home, group your child’s clothes together – by colour or by pattern – dots, stripes, etc.

If at school, tell children to sort themselves into groups based on what they are wearing. Guide this a little if necessary.

8. Play Store

Use or make a pretend grocery store and sort out the items as they go together – cleaning products, bakery items, canned items and fresh fruits.

9. Picture Cards       

Use traditional picture card games and sort the pictures.

For this activity, use a memory card set (like the one in my Activity Packs and Printables store) and get your children to make their own categories.

10. Catalogue Pics    

Have an old catalogue or newspaper insert lying around from a toy store, grocery shop or furniture store? 

Cut up the items and group them by category.

11. Beads

Sort beads into categories by colour, shape, size and material (plastic, metal or wooden). 

Sorting beads and buttons is a great fine motor activity too, especially if you pick them up with tweezers.

12. Fruit and Vegetable Sort

Use plastic or wooden fruit and vegetable toys and categorize them into fruit salad or vegetable soup.

See if your children can categorize them in other ways – such as veggies that can be eaten raw and those that must be cooked, or group them by colour or shape.          

Little boy sorting out plastic fruits by colour

13. Odd One Out Game  

The odd one out game is a great activity for older preschoolers, to teach them to identify which item or picture does not belong in a certain group, and for what reason.

I hope you’ve found some new ideas for sorting activities for kids. A great way to teach kids to sort is to play these fun category games with them.

Source:

Total Learning: Developmental Curriculum for the Young Child, by Joanne Hendrick.

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