I have done a lot of activities geared towards 4 and 5 year olds to help prepare Max for kindergarten so I was trying to find one that my 3 year old son, Ollie would enjoy. AND THIS WAS IT! Not only did he love it but Max did too!  We sorted by color and then made up recipes where I would say, “I want two yellow buttons, 1 yellow pom pom and 3 yellow beads, ect. So not only were we sorting by color but we were doing math problems as well! They stayed at this activity for over an hour!

Here’s the catch…..the end activity did not look like the picture perfect beginning one as you can see in photo 3 HA! But, that is what makes the activity so great–they did what I had planned at first but then turned it into their own activity which is why they stayed at it for so long! I provided the materials for the opportunities and they created the play! Can you guess what we will be doing again tomorrow??

TO DO: 

  1. Make colored water in containers (water +food coloring)
  2. Gather colorful small items (that can go in water, of course) 
  3. Put a spoon in each container. I bought these little tiny disposable spoons at the Dollar Tree in the party section and my kids LOVE to use them for play but you obviously don’t need those spoons.
  4. Sort by color and PLAY (Ollie used the spoon to scoop up the pom-poms but my intention was for him to just use their hands…but a little extra fine motor work is fine with this teacher mama!