Early Years Colour Sort Activity

Looking for ways to encourage early maths skills at home? This simple colour sort activity takes seconds to set up and introduces important basic maths skills. I would highly recommend investing in a colour sorting toy, such as the one we use with little coloured animals and bowls. We got this one from Amazon https://shorturl.at/nX5It. However, this activity can also be done with everyday items around the house and some coloured pieces of paper.

I’m always looking for ways to support my 2 year olds maths development at home. This set up literally took seconds and was highly engaging. The idea is for the child to start to recognise and sort items based on colour. Sorting into groups is an important early years mathematical skill. Encourage your child to say the colour of the item when adding it to the correctly coloured bowl. You could use different tools such as tweezers or spoons to also help develop their fine motor skills.

Model counting the animals as the child places them into the bowl to help develop their counting skills. How many animals can fit into one bowl? How many are there altogether? You could challenge your child by counting how many are in the bowl, then taking some away. How many are left? Introducing mathematical vocabulary from an early age really helps their understanding and forms the basic knowledge they need to eventually move on to more difficult concepts in Reception and beyond.

To adapt for younger children who may be unable to play with smaller pieces, have 3 or 4 different coloured boxes (or assign a colour to each box using different coloured paper or drawing different coloured spots). Then grab some larger household items in the different colours and model placing the coloured item to its matching box.

How this supports their development

• Physical Fine Motor Skills – Using their fingers to pick up the small items develops their finger and hand muscles. This can be extended by offering other tools such as tweezers, spoons or scoops.
  
• Mathematics – Early understanding of sorting into groups dependent on their colour and early counting skills. Lots of opportunity for the use of mathematical vocabulary as well as colour recognition.
  
• Communication and language – Talking about the colours of the animals, which animals match which bowl and conversations around counting.

Does your child enjoy colour sorting? Have you any other recommendations for resources or colour sorting activities? Why not have a go at loose parts play next – https://theeducatormum.co.uk/loose-parts-play-on-a-budget/