Color Sorting Beads

(E was 2 years and 5 months old.)

You’ll need:

• Beads.
• Play dough.
• OR toothpicks and play dough.
• OR toothpicks and a cork mat.

The initial idea was to stick toothpicks in little balls of play dough and put the appropriately colored beads on the toothpicks.

{I’d seen this at Timeless Adventures but chose to use colored play dough to match the colors of the beads. That gave me a chance for a fine motor exercise of my own during preparation because I ended up picking out all the beads that we didn’t have matching play dough for 😉 }

E got busy right away

but soon did what I don’t wanna say I’d worried about, but what I’d known was likely to happen: she took all the little balls of play dough and made a big “ball”. Well, play dough is for kneading, right?

She hadn’t realized that I wouldn’t be able to separate the colors and was a bit taken aback when she did. Of course I still had some spare play dough and made new supports for E’s toothpicks to save the day 😉

Again, she started sorting {she really liked the white beads for some reason 😉 }

then started playing her own game again, taking the toothpicks out of the play dough, sticking them back in and finding new spots for them on the table.

Finally, she came up with a new twist on the color sorting idea: She pushed the beads into the matching play dough! I thought that was really clever!

The next day, E suddenly stood in front of me holding up the bag of beads {that I clearly hadn’t put away far enough out of her reach 😉 }, and this time, I just skipped the play dough and simply gave her toothpicks to see what her plans were.

Again, she started threading the beads on the toothpicks but soon found that they didn’t readily stay on.

Thanks to our genius Papa, who sat at the table with us, we found a third set-up for color sorting our beads: He went and got a cork mat {that usually protects our table from hot pots and pans} to support the toothpicks!

This worked out great, and all three of us ended up sorting some beads and loosening those fingers 😉

 

What I learned:

• E can’t resist her play dough – but that’s the beauty of all the activities we do, no matter what she does with the materials I provide, she always learns something and has fun along the way.
• I was glad to finally find something she enjoyed threading beads on – she doesn’t like the pointy pipe cleaners we have.

Additional suggestions:

• Make patterns {Papa tried but E wasn’t interested}.
• Use pipe cleaners instead of toothpicks.

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