Sorting Pasta

When the Pea was younger she thought every animal was a dog. She saw a cow, she said "Dog." She saw a pig, she said "Dog." Children often generalize based on their prior experiences. Claire's first experience with an animal was when she saw a dog in our neighborhood. To her, everything that walked on all fours and had fur was a dog. She eventually realized that dogs are animals that bark, have fur, and are often on leashes. She began calling a horse a horse, a cow a cow, and a sheep a sheep. One day, as we were driving out to my grandparents house, she saw a brown cow in a field. She said, "Horse". Claire had given cows specific characteristics - black and white spots, walk on all fours, roam in a field, etc. When she saw the brown cow, it did not fit in the category of "cows". To her, it looked more like a horse with its solid brown color.

Children learn through comparison. They compare cows to non-cows to learn what a cow is. They do this same thing when they learn letters, colors, food names. To help children learn more naturally we do comparisons of letters and words by sorting. Claire is not ready for letter or word sorts quite yet. But sorting is a preliteracy skill and can be practiced as a toddler.

In this particular instance, I had Claire sort a group of three different types of pastas - bowties, macaroni, and penne. I divided a piece of paper into three columns and placed two of each type at the top. I told Claire "These macaronis go in this column. The penne go in this column. And the bowties go in this column."

I asked Claire to place each pasta in the right column.

She did a great job and put all of the pastas in the right column! Being able to sort the pastas will later be applied to sorting letters of different fonts and later to sorting pictures/words using sounds.

After sorting, Claire decided to make a pattern.

In addition to sorting, pasta is great for sensory purposes, fine motor skills (threading onto plastic string), and making patterns.