My kids both loved this game!! It was a great critical thinking skill because instead of sorting the toys by one attribute they really had to think about what category they would go in. Categorizing in young children is important because: It gives them a way to describe an item to others.

It provides connections between ideas for similarities/differences and It gives them practice at grouping their thoughts. To challenge my kids I had two different kinds of animals, the block animals and the plastic animals…they had to look more deeply into which one goes where and why and it basically comes down to one was a block and one was plastic.

To Do: I simply gathered several toys that weren’t necessarily the same but that would go in the same toy group (Leogs, block animals, cars, plastic animals, people). I set 5 cups on the tray and sorted the first one so that my kids knew how they should sort and then let them get to work!