Sorting Center

Sorting is such an important skill for young children!    

Imagine a big pile of papers, bills, and mail on your desk.  It takes time to find exactly what you're looking for, right?  But if everything is sorted and organized into a filing cabinet, it takes just a minute to locate the paper you need.  Our brains work in a similar way.  When we have trained our brains to sort information into categories, it is so much easier to retrieve it when we need it.

This farm center is set up as an invitation to play and sort colorful animals.  I got the set through Scholastic's teacher bonus catalog.  The animals come in 6 different colors.  We copied a barn onto 6 coordinating pieces of card stock.  After laminating, we cut the barn doors so that they would open.  Students can sort the animals by color onto the matching barn.

Another option is to sort the animals by type.  Inside each set of barn doors, we attached a piece of velcro.  There is a small bowl with pictures of each of the 6 animals (pig, goose, horse, sheep, chicken and cow) so the students can label each barn with the type of animal.

Finally, we included numbers at the center.  Students can choose a number, attach it to the barn and then count the number of animals.

I love the versatility of this center, and of course the kids love all the little farm animals.  We discovered today that the rubber animals make a really interesting sound when you dump them out or push them around the table.  It's almost like a spring rain storm.

If you don't have a Scholastic account, the manipulatives are also available from Carson Dellosa.

Have a great day learning and playing with your children!