To do: Gather items to sort at the park like leaves or acorns
Time: 15 minutes
Materials: Blanket, leaves, acorns, twigs
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Sorting is a great exercise for your child to categorize the world. Try doing this with park treasures!

Pick a spot on your picnic blanket to practice sorting, then set out to find materials to sort. For example, can you sort a pile of leaves into red, yellow, green?

Look for objects that you can gather A LOT of, like acorns, leaves, small twigs. Then decide with your child how you will sort them. Every time they determine that an object belongs in this category and not that category, they are working on refining their senses, including visual discrimination.

Try these categories to get started:

By size
By color
By physical attributes like rough or smooth
By shape
By what they belong to, like the bark belongs to the tree, the petal belongs to the flower

Have a plan of where you’ll leave your items when you’re finished. You could return them to where you found them, or distribute appropriately.

For your older child: Try sorting by first letter, “Let’s find things that begin with T” for example. Alternatively, sort using more specific categories. Shapes to look for could be ellipse or quatrefoil, or colors like burgundy or mustard.

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