Teaching Toddler: Color Sorting

This was perhaps slightly ambitious for us, but it was still fun to do. To be honest sometimes I'm not quite sure what is too ambitious, but as I complete an activity with her I can usually tell what works and what doesn't work.

It's not too typical for a 15 month old to know colors (at least from the babies I know). They are just starting to learn things like "ball" and "nose." However you do have to start at one point or another with colors, letters and numbers.

For our color sorting activity I wanted to keep it easy with three colors. Looking back now, I think it would have been even more appropriate with just two colors. I simply colored some paper plates and found objects from our "learning stash" to place on each plate.

Honestly she did pretty well the first few times when I placed the objects to the side, keeping the colors together with their own. She went through and placed each right object on the right plate (with my pointing and help a little). However, once I mixed all of the colored objects up, she had a much more difficult time with this. It was cute because she wanted everything in the blue plate for some reason. She also wanted all of the Popsicle sticks to herself. Occasionally she'd throw an object on a plate and it would be the right one.

The beauty of these activities is that A) they occupy her B) I get to see how her mind works C) we learn as we go and of course, D) it teaches her something. As a mother, especially a SAHM with the time, I think it is important to incorporate these small activities into our days. I'm no teacher and I'm learning as I go on what works and what doesn't work. I also don't force anything. We do these activities for around 10 minutes or until she loses interest. At such a young age, I don't want to force learning on her. I want it to be fun!

I've decided in an ideal world that I think I truly would want to home school my kiddos until they reach around 10 or 11 and then send them off to school. But that's a post for a whole other day and of course a huge decision that I have plenty of time on.