Sorting and matching of colours is simple to set up and will arouse child’s curiosity to play and have fun.
It is a great activity to develop fine motor control, coordination, concentration and learning about colours.
The Playgroup students can now recognize all colours . They are able to sort and match colours and shapes through different kinds of activities.
The caterpillar activity is one of them; in the beginning of the activity children tore red, blue and green coloured paper into small pieces. These bits of paper were set in a tray on the table. In the next process, I showed caterpillar to all children and told them, “this is a very hungry caterpillar and he wants to eat some food”. Will you help the caterpillar to fill his tummy?” Everyone replied, “Yes!”
I showed them the bits of paper and told them it was the caterpillar’s food. I then pointed to the three circles in his body, each a different colour and said that each circle wanted food matching to its colour. I instructed them to hunt for pieces of paper, sort, match and paste on the appropriate circle, for e.g. blue pieces of paper on blue circles.
The children moved around the classroom excitedly hunting, sorting, matching and finally pasting with glue to feed the caterpillar.
While feeding the hungry caterpillar, the children were able to satiate their need to explore, to compare & contrast, to problem solve and to learn with fun.
Such activities develop a range of thinking skills in young children and build the foundation of later concepts.
