Concentration
Toddlers watch and help a caregiver put together items of the same color.
Be Prepared: Use two of the five available bags and their corresponding pretend food items. The activity described below assumes red and yellow colors are used. Place the food items (a total of 8 food items) in a random order on the tray.
[Invite several toddlers to join you at a low table to watch and help you play a game with pretend foods. Display the tray of pretend food items.]
There are a lot of pretend foods on our tray. Let’s look closely at what we have.
[Pick up 3–4 items, one at a time, and say (or invite toddlers to say) their name and color. Include both red and yellow items. Then invite toddlers to hold and feel any of the items on the tray. After a brief period of exploration, invite toddlers to return all pretend food items to the tray. Mix the item colors on the tray.]
Did you notice that some foods on our tray are red and some foods are yellow?
[Hold a yellow food item and a red food item in separate hands for comparison.]
Here is a pretend banana. It is yellow. Here is a pretend strawberry. It is red. Yellow and red are different colors.
I am going to put together the foods that are red. Then I am going to put together the foods that are yellow.
[Describe your approach to putting together on the table a collection of foods of the same color, as suggested below.]
Here is a red food. Here is another red food. I am putting these foods next to each other. They go together. Their color is the same.
[Hold a yellow food next to the two red foods you put together on the table.]
Here is a yellow food. This yellow food does not go with the red foods. Yellow and red are different colors. I am putting together foods that are the same color.
[Continue to describe your actions in putting together a grouping of red foods and then a grouping of yellow foods. Point to each group when you are done.]
I am done putting the red foods together and the yellow foods together. Our tray is empty.
Now I want to put our foods in a bag that is the same color as the foods.
[Display the red and yellow bags, side by side.]
Which bag should I use for our red foods?
[Invite toddlers to point to or say the color of the bag you should use. If toddlers point to the yellow bag, gently remind them that we want a bag that is the same color as the foods.]
We will put our red foods in a red bag. We will put our yellow foods in a yellow bag.
[Invite toddlers to help you put food items in their corresponding bags.]
We looked closely at the foods on our tray. We noticed there were different colors of foods. Some foods were red. Some foods were yellow. You watched me put the same colors together. I put the red foods together and the yellow foods together. Then you helped me pick a red bag for the red foods and a yellow bag for the yellow foods. Thank you for watching and helping.
Concentration
A toddler puts together items of the same color with caregiver support.
Be Prepared: Use two or three of the five available bags and their corresponding pretend food items, depending on your understanding of the toddler’s sorting skills. If the toddler involved in the current activity participated in Option 1, use colors of materials that were not used in Option 1. The activity described below assumes two colors (green and brown) are used. Place the food items in a random order on the tray (a total of eight food items for the two colors used in the description below).
Pick up two items of different colors, one at a time, and put them on the table with some distance between each. Explain that the two foods are different colors. One is green, one is brown. Then pick up a brown food item from the tray and put it next to the brown food item on the table. Explain that the colors of these two foods are the same.
Invite the toddler to put the remaining food items on the tray with foods on the table that are the same color. Offer verbal support as needed. Describe the toddler’s efforts. You might offer a midpoint progress report on how the tray is getting empty.
After all food items are in their same-color groupings on the table, present the two bags and invite the toddler to put foods that are the same color in the bag of the same color.
Conclude the activity by enthusiastically recognizing how the toddler looked carefully at all of the pretend foods on our tray and put together foods that were the same color.
Watch toddler reactions throughout each activity to determine whether more or less challenge is appropriate. Challenge can be added to Option 1 by inviting toddlers to remove food items from the tray for the red grouping and then the yellow grouping. Using three different colors in Option 2 is significantly more challenging than using two colors.
Some toddlers will likely know some color names. It is appropriate to use color names in this activity but a toddler can readily participate without knowing color names. Avoid adapting the activity into a lesson on color names.
One of the concentration challenges in this activity is to focus on color and ignore type of food. Look for whether toddlers pay attention to types of food in sorting the pretend food items. See the Extra Support tip.
Extra support
Enrichment
Materials Needed: Constructive Playthings® Colorful Soft-Sorting Food Bags
Put food items that represent 3–4 different colors in random order on a low table. Invite 2–3 toddlers to put foods of the same color in their corresponding bag. Example: all yellow food items go in the yellow bag. This could be done by giving each toddler a bag for collecting food items of the same color as his/her bag. Or putting the bags open on the table so toddlers have an opportunity to sort items by color.
Materials Needed: see activity description
Invite preschool-age children to participate in Option 2. Some may enjoy the challenge of sorting all available food items into five different color groupings and/or the Enrichment suggestion. Emphasize the importance of looking at color, not type of food.
© 2024 The Trustees of Purdue University | All Rights Reserved