Are sorting activities for preschoolers really that fun?

Recently I did a post on how I made my easy peazy light table/board. As I mentioned in that post, the children (all my classes, ages 2 to 6) really enjoyed the light table. We sometimes use printables on the table and fill them in using the glass beads. What I didn’t mention in that post was that my 2-year-old class had a lot of fun dumping a lot of my containers with glass beads and jewels, which was fine and also age appropriate. The next class came in to a light table that was pretty much covered with all the small disks, beads and jewels. For the next class to be able to use the light table, we had to do something with all the stuff covering the table.

“Hey, friends, how about we put these back into their containers?”

“Yeah!” they all said.

So we proceeded to sort the beads, disks, and jewels based on color and sometimes shape. I would put one of whatever was going to go in that container, and hand it to a child and that was what they searched for to put into the container. There were so many different colors and shapes! I could easily see where it could be overwhelming, but they completed the task. Some children found sorting more difficult than others but what I loved about this activity is that some children would see a bead that was in the container of the friend beside or across from them and they would hand the bead and say, “Here ya go. This one’s for you.” They helped each other without me saying a word to them, which always warms my heart.

It took almost our entire class time. I did have a pretty good class planned and we basically didn’t get to do it. Later after I thought about it, I decided it wasn’t a bad thing — the kids were learning a skill and were helping and being kind to each other. They all were participating and happy. They felt like they were helping me (which they were!). We could always do my planned class another day. Sometimes you have to abandon plans and go with it.

We talked about the different shapes and colors of our objects we were sorting. But you can always sort using different or maybe unusual criteria. How about sorting by texture? Fuzzy things over here, rough things over here, etc. Or even by size: The largest, medium, smallest. Or by kind of item: monkeys in this container, giraffes in one, and dinosaurs in another. Learning to group items together is how children learn how to differentiate, compare and contrast.

After doing our sorting activity, I was thinking about how I could mark the lids with maybe a picture of the item that goes in that container to better help them with their sorting skills.

Sorting activities for preschoolers really can be fun — I know because my preschoolers and kindergarteners proved it to me today!