Sorting--Toddler Style

I haven't had a lot of luck getting my two year old to cooperate during school time.  Shocker!  :)  It's okay, though!  I really just wanted him to be exposed to a little bit of what I was doing for Jack, and to show some interest every now and then on sticking around and completing a task.  I am not about causing fits to be thrown over "school time" in the summer.  But today, I was really, really hoping that he would be up for doing things my way, because I really wanted him to like this simple little activity.  And he really did!

Today was about color sorting.  He is doing great with colors and is beginning to point them out all over the place, so I figured it is time to start sorting things by color.  Sorting is an important skill, and we happen to have a high-interest item in abundance around here that is great for sorting--cars!

I lined up a bunch of random scraps of construction paper on the floor that I saved from cutting off of projects at work.  I got a tub of a bunch of different cars that could be easily sorted by color, and we got to work.  He was resistant for a couple of seconds, because he was more interested in shoving all of the cars into the back of his tractor, but after sitting on my lap and getting a couple of high fives, he was off.  Totally loved it.

Here are some pictures of the fun:

 

Jack was not super excited about the activities I planned for him (sans cars) when he saw what Harry was doing.  So I told him to set his jobs aside and be the teacher for Harry.  He did great helping him with his orange/yellow confusion. :)

 

 

And just a little quick clip. :)

 

 

I told Jack that next week, he will use the cars and trucks for school time.  I'm planning on having him sort different ways--color, number of wheels, steering wheel or no steering wheel, how many windows, etc... to teach him that there are several ways to sort the same group of objects.  Can you think of some other groups of objects we could use to sort into categories with our kiddos at home?