Monday, July 7, 2014

Toddler Sorting Games

Hello!
And another 'Hello' for good measure. I have been absent from blogging for what seems forever. I do have a good excuse, however. A very cute excuse. One that likes to snuggle. One that wears baby clothes and will one day call me Mom.




He's sleeping, so here I am with just a short post about something easy you can do with your toddler with stuff you have around the house.

Best kind of post, yes? One that requires no shopping. Just a touch of creativity and you can be on your way to doing it too!

The first part is actually from a few months ago.


I had been trying to think of more activities to stimulate my little guy's mind. He is so busy, and so very smart. (I know. All moms must say that about their children. But it's so true.)

So after a bit of Googling and a bit of Pinterest I came up with some ideas I wanted to try, but most of them from Pinterest required a trip to the store. We have no construction paper, for example.

So I looked around at what we had. I found these two baskets I'd purchased for a party game at some of my Arbonne parties, and gathered up the ever-present Megabloks. I took away all the other colors except what I had baskets for (until I make it over to the Dollar Tree to see if they have more), and gathered up my one-year-old. It did not take a lot of explaining- I just showed him the colors, and put them in the right basket. Toddlers are great mimickers. He picked it up right away, and sorted them all, and dumped them out to start again. 







This kept him busy for a half-hour. No lie. Anything that keeps a 21 month old busy for that long and is not only a safe (for my house!) activity but also helps build his brain, I'm all for it!



Try it with other things too! Today we played this same game, but instead of just blocks, I grabbed all the red and blue toys I could find in his toy basket and added them to the game. Ironically it did take a minute for him to catch on, but he got it.



We also played another version of sorting today. This time it involved number recognition and matching. This is a skill I wanted him to learn for pre-piano skills- recognizing groups by number.

I took some scrap paper and a fat marker, and doodled some blocks on them- a side view, showing 1, 2, and 4 bumps on the blocks. (If there were any of the 3-blocks handy I'd have done 3 too.) and I went ahead and wrote the numerals on the papers too. He's been announcing numbers when he sees them. Today he surprised me with "Mom! Mom! Nine!" and showed me a 9. He'll tell us what speed limit signs say too... "Three. O." I told you he was smart. 

He picked up the concept right away on this one too. (Win!)
 Do excuse his toy-mess.


Make it as simple as possible! Toddlers do not care.
I'd love to hear what variations of these you have tried with your kids!

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