Sorting and Categorizing Lessons Made Easy!

From supermarkets to libraries, we see examples of sorting and categorizing in a wide variety of places in our everyday lives. Here are a variety of ways to include these lessons on your shelves this spring.


Sorting

Teaching children how to sort is an important lesson in the Montessori classroom. Through various works within the classroom, children learn how to spot similarities and patterns between items, helping them create categories to sort the objects into.

 

Sorting by color is a great first lesson. The sorting work should contain objects that are similar in every way except for color, like these colorful sorting cubes or this rainbow sorting kit. This control of error helps children focus on the one thing that makes the items different, color.

Once a child understands the basic concept of sorting, introduce an activity that has multiple ways of being categorized. This dice sorting work comes with dice in a variety of sizes, leading the child to choose different ways to categories these items.

Adding Language

There are various opportunities to incorporate language and counting into more exercises of sorting and classification. This veggie sorting kit is a wonderful way to help children practice sorting by the name of the object. Children will naturally understand how to classify objects through lessons in the classroom, but will begin to make next level cognitive connections with the introduction of vocabulary.

The science and cultural area of the classroom is a great place to dive deeper into sorting. Concepts like the five senses, Living/Non-Living, Plant/Animal, and Vertebrate/Invertebrate are all wonderful categories to sort by.  

Sorting by season is another great way to expand on this exercise of categorizing and is perfect as we transition from cooler months into the summer.

Sorting Trays

Need a variety of sorting trays for the objects you already have within your classroom?  This value pack of sorting trays helps you create lessons where the child can sort items into either three, four or even six different categories.

Through the natural progression of this concept from concrete lessons to abstract thoughts, children will prepare their minds for bigger concepts within the math, culture and language areas of the classroom. Happy Sorting!