How does your child tell apart their dolls from their blocks? How about mama from dada?
To be able to tell things apart, they will have to identify and differentiate between various characteristics in what they see. One of the earliest and easiest characteristics they understand is colour.
Your child’s ability to see colours begins to develop at about 3 months and they will have a strong sense of colour by the time they are preschoolers. While there are colours all around them to enjoy, a game or activity focused on colour identification and sorting can help fine tune their knowledge.
If you have a toddler or preschooler who is learning about the world of colours, this week’s co create activity is perfect for you!
Benefits of the DIY Colour Sorter
This week’s Co-Create activity is once again brought to you by Vidushi, a DIY Blogger and mom to four-year-old Ira. You can see Vidushi’s previous activity, a Sheep Wool Shearing game, here.
This week’s activity is called DIY Colour Sorter. It is ideal for toddlers who are learning colours and numbers and offer them a host of benefits.
1. Colour recognition - Identifying the colours and matching the beads and sticks will help your child get familiar with different colours.
2. Visual discrimination - Telling the colours apart to put them on the right stick will hone their visual discrimination skills. Using pattern cards will further develop this skill.
3. Bilateral coordination - Using both their hands together to sort and drop the beads onto the sticks will strengthen their bilateral coordination.
4. Hand-eye coordination - Moving the beads to place it at a precise spot will hone their hand-eye coordination.
5. Fine motor skills - Working with small beads also makes this an excellent fine motor activity.
6. Learn numbers and counting - With simple dot stickers, you can turn this into a fun counting game for your child to learn identifying numbers and counting correctly.
Creating the Colour Sorter
Age group:
This activity can be enjoyed by children between 2.5 to 5 years.
Materials required:
1. A cardboard egg crate
2. Barbeque sticks/toothpicks/straws for the sticks
3. Colourful beads/clay balls for the colour sorting
4. Coloured sketch pens or child-safe paint
5. Dot stickers or bindis (optional)
6. A4 sheets or white chart paper (optional)
How to create the game:
1. Colour the sticks to match the colours on the beads. Here, they are coloured in red, green, yellow, blue, and orange
2. Fix the sticks in the egg tray as shown in the picture above. Your DIY Colour Sorter is ready!
3. Optional: To make this a counting activity, you can write numbers on the dot stickers and stick them to the egg crate.
4. Optional: Make pattern cards by drawing a simple colour sorter with different patterns on the A4 sheets.
How to play with the DIY Colour Sorter
1. Colour sorter - Ask your child to sort and group the beads into different colours and add them to the sticks with matching colours.
2. Pattern copying - Encourage your child to recreate the patterns from the pattern cards by placing the right number of coloured beads on each stick!
3. Counting - You can easily turn this into a counting game by asking them to count the number of beads as marked on the dot stickers and add them to the right slots. Change the position of the dot stickers to keep it interesting!
We hope you’ve enjoyed this activity. If you would like to share your experience playing with this sorter, tag us at #CoCreatewithshumee. Stay home and stay safe!
Vidushi is a DIY blogger, storyteller, and an author. For more such activities, you can follow her @iracreativeengine on Instagram.