Thursday, December 2, 2010

Homeschool Preschool - Color Sorting

Goldie has been keeping me very busy this fall doing all kinds of preschooly things. (I've been heating my kitchen with my laminator!)  Goldie's latest achievement is sorting by color.  Sorting is an important part of an early math curriculum. We started working on this around her second birthday at the urging of her vision therapist. I didn't think she was ready for actual sorting so I focused more on just learning colors. Once Goldie was able to sign her colors (thank-you Signing Time) I was able to know how well she could identify and label her colors.

First I tried having her sort with Busy Bugs. But, she was so distracted by all the different types of bugs that she didn't care what color they were. Spider, caterpillar, fly, etc...




Then I had a lightbulb moment when Swatcho left her Sorry! game on the kitchen table.

Sure enough, without the distracting bugs, Goldie was able to sort the red from the blue and place them on the correct squares. Another important math concept is one to one correspondence.


After this, I gave Goldie red, yellow, and blue buckets with a pile of colored cubes.  She shocked me by immediately sorting them out. I had to run and get green and white bowls. If more than one color was stuck together she would pull them apart and place each cube in its correct container.



Moments like these just blow me away. I find myself thinking back to when Goldie was born and being told she had Down syndrome and then at a year old when I was told she was legally blind. I wondered then if these days would ever come. Now, I see her love of learning and how she wakes up one day and just does something she's never done, but acts like she's always known how to do it. And my heart overflows.

5 comments:

Cheryl said...

Yay! Goldie!! What great ideas for sorting the colors!Thanks for sharing,I'm going to keep this in mind for Ruby.

Mel said...

Clever girl Goldie! And great job Mummy!

time4learningmama said...

What a beautiful story! Thanks for giving me a smile today, and way to go, Goldie! :)

SunflowerStories said...

That is fabulous!! What great, fun, learning time for her.

wendy said...

I enjoyed reading your blog. My daughter is six years old and also has down syndrome. Have a great week. Wendy