- crayons (wide variety of colors)
- plastic cups (clear)
- color
- dark
- different
- group
- light
- same
- shade
MA Standards:
Speaking and Listening/SL.PK.MA.1: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners during daily routines and play.
Language/L.PK.MA.1: Demonstrate use of oral language in informal everyday activities.
Language/L.PK.MA.6: Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, listening to books read aloud, activities, and play.
Language/L.PK.MA.5.a: Demonstrate understanding of concepts by sorting common objects into categories (e.g., sort objects by color, shape, or texture).
Head Start Outcomes:
Language Development/Receptive Language: Attends to language during conversations, songs, stories, or other learning experiences.
Language Development/Expressive Language: Uses language to express ideas and needs.
Language Development/Expressive Language: Uses increasingly complex and varied vocabulary.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Language 2: Participate actively in discussions, listen to the ideas of others, and ask and answer relevant questions.
English Language Arts/Language 3: Communicate personal experiences or interests.
Explore Together (indoors): Sorting Colors
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
STEM Key Concepts: There are many different colors; A color can have many different shades (from very light to very dark); Objects can be classified by color
ELA Focus Skills: Follow Directions, Speaking and Listening, Vocabulary
Draw children’s attention to the materials and explain that you are going to have them work together to group the crayons by color.
- Put a red crayon in one cup and a yellow crayon in a another cup. Pick up another red crayon and ask, What cup do you think I should put this crayon in? Why do you think that?
- After children respond, put the crayon in the cup with the red crayon.
- Pick up another red crayon and ask a volunteer to name the color and place it with the right group. Encourage children to describe the crayon shade as light or dark as they share why they chose the red crayon cup.
Have children take turns and work together to sort the crayons.
- You may want to limit the number of sorting cups to five or six. This requires children to group different but similar colors together.
- Or you can make more cups available as needed. For example, if children can’t agree if a particular crayon belongs in the blue group or the green group, you can encourage them to come up with a new color category name that includes both ideas, and add an additional cup for “yellow-y orange” crayons. (This is a nice opportunity to reinforce vocabulary for color names since the name of each color is written on the crayon.)
Reflect and Share Together
Display a set of sorted crayons and invite children who participated to share their process with the group. Point at a container of crayons and ask,
- How is this group of crayons the same? How are they different?
- Is there a crayon in this group that we could put in another group? Why?
Social Emotional Tip: Talk with children about what it was like to make decisions as a group. Say, Did someone become the leader? Did everyone get a turn deciding which colors go where? What are some better ways to make decisions as a group? Encourage thoughtful discussion on turn-taking and everyone having a “voice” in the group.