My preschooler loves to play with our frog and bear counters to practice color and size sorting! Sorting and separating rainbow counters
The ones I have are also beads, so my daughter loves stringing them into a necklace. We took turns making a pond full of colorful lily pads that needed the right colored frogs on them. She asked to practice color and size sorting again and again!
Color sorting is the most obvious way to sort for a preschooler. We've already matched colorful shoes along with Pete the Cat! As I presented the different colored "lily pads" for my daughter to sort the frogs onto, she quickly got in to the challenge. I think I'll include this in the Rainbow Busy Box next time I set it up for my little one.
Once I pointed out the differences in sizes, Strawberry also loved sorting them out by size. Because of her creative mind, small and medium became "babies" and "big brothers and sisters," and the large frogs were the mamas and papas. My daughter loved to put the mamas and babies together. I had to make larger sized lily pads so the whole family could live together in our room-sized pond.
My older child wanted to play too, but he wanted to incorporate a game into our color and size sorting. My daughter insisted it be her Christmas present game: Spot It! Alphabet
As I said, I love these frogs. I believe Learning Resources stopped making the frogs, as I cannot find them anywhere for sale!
However, so if you are looking for some small rainbow fun, you can also play with the Learning Resources Three Bear Family Rainbow Counters
For my older child, I also made some simple pattern cards to use with the rainbow frogs. Patterning is an important skill for developing mathematical thinking skills and critical thinking in general.
Again, bears or any other rainbow counters would work well with these same cards! You can get the pattern cards in my TPT store or my shop.
Here are other ideas for using rainbow counters with kids of all ages:
See more rainbow activities on my blog and in my shop! Then, scroll down for a round-up of other rainbow counter activities.
There is stage each of my kids has enjoyed, between two and three, when they truly loved Pete the Cat’s I Love My White Shoes! Since it is so fun to sing the song and toddlers are just starting to recognize colors, it’s a perfect stage for beginning color recognition and color matching. Toddler Color
Read MoreMy preschooler loves to play with our frog and bear counters to practice color and size sorting! Sorting and separating rainbow counters or rainbow bear counters helps preschoolers with color and shape discrimination, and playing with physical counters or beads encourages fine motor skills development. The ones I have are also beads, so my daughter loves stringing
Read MoreMy little kids always loved rainbows! What a perfect subject for the month of March, too, since we “celebrate” St. Patrick’s Day. My toddler “Rainbow” busy box includes a cut-and-paste craft, color sorts, rainbow books, and other fun items related to rainbows! My main activity for my toddler was a simple cut-and-paste rainbow color sort craft
Read MoreI love to use an engaging picture book as an excuse to spearhead a creative project! After we read a fun picture book about kittens mixing colors, my preschooler and I were eager to give our own color mixing project a try. Because the book I chose spent the whole book mixing colors from their
Read MoreI’m quickly finding that my preschooler needs hands on interactive fun. When she gets home from preschool it’s a little bit before lunch time, so without an activity, she’ll whine until the food is served. This week’s favorite activity was a color mixing fine motor water activity using food coloring and a kid-sized dropper.
Read MoreThis month’s Story Corner Blog Hop is about Spring, and while I have a huge number of favorite spring books I could share about (I may in the coming weeks), the book I kept coming back to is one that my daughter has recently fallen in love with: Lift-the-Flap Colors. Because spring is simply packed
Read MoreThere is stage each of my kids has enjoyed, between two and three, when they truly loved Pete the Cat’s I Love My White Shoes! Since it is so fun to sing the song and toddlers are just starting to recognize colors, it’s a perfect stage for beginning color recognition and color matching. Toddler Color
Read MoreTo prepare for Earth Day and Arbor Day, we learned about conserving trees by recycling paper in our kitchen. Reading The Great Paper Caper, a silly mystery story, prompted this fun, hands-on science lesson. A Conservation Story in The Great Paper CaperBefore we made our paper, we read a fun story about trees, the need for conservation,
Read MoreMy little kids always loved rainbows! What a perfect subject for the month of March, too, since we “celebrate” St. Patrick’s Day. My toddler “Rainbow” busy box includes a cut-and-paste craft, color sorts, rainbow books, and other fun items related to rainbows! My main activity for my toddler was a simple cut-and-paste rainbow color sort craft
Read MoreI love to use an engaging picture book as an excuse to spearhead a creative project! After we read a fun picture book about kittens mixing colors, my preschooler and I were eager to give our own color mixing project a try. Because the book I chose spent the whole book mixing colors from their
Read MoreBefore a child is ready to jump into learning to read, it’s important to review basic phonemic principles, such as hearing the parts of words. Rhyming is a fun activity that is ideal for kids preparing to read or just starting out. After reading a favorite picture book, we played a “Dusty” Rhyming Game to practice making
Read MoreI’m quickly finding that my preschooler needs hands on interactive fun. When she gets home from preschool it’s a little bit before lunch time, so without an activity, she’ll whine until the food is served. This week’s favorite activity was a color mixing fine motor water activity using food coloring and a kid-sized dropper.
Read More