Montessori Inspired Fine Motor Color Sort. This fun fine motor color sort will be a hit with your early learners and 2 year-old toddlers. My niece Belle will be two in November and she was hooked on this activity from the moment we started! I am so excited to start sharing some fun learning activities suitable for toddlers between ages 2-5. I will be labeling each activity with the appropriate age and skill.
There are many ways to get kids to practice color sorting, at this age though they won’t be able to work with too many colors at once but they will start to distinguish between some colors and shapes. For example in the activity below, Belle was able to see the difference between yellow, red and blue. It was difficult for her to distinguish between the blue and green colors. So, you can definitely modify this activity to only include two or three colors for sorting. I included all of them for extra practice since Belle had done some color sorting with the same mini block just before (we sorted between pink, blue, green and yellow). She was familiar with the colored block in previous play.
It was also a good idea since the following activity (after the color sort) involved filling up the ‘ice cube holes’ with as many mini blocks as we can for spatial awareness.
What you’ll need to set up this activity:
- Colored mini Lego Blocks or wooden blocks.
- Colored paper or colored round tissue paper
- Ice pop maker tray
- Zip lock bags to store the blocks and the activity (you can easily use resealable freezer bags)
How to start the activity:
Belle was very excited to start with this activity because we pulled out the bag with the mini blocks first and she knows these blocks and already loves them! So while she pulled all her blocks out of the mini bag, I prepared the tissue paper on our mat with each color. I chose to use several of these tissue papers to make the color stand out as they are quite thin (but of course you can use colored paper if you wish – that would definitely work too). I chose to place two colors first.
So I began the activity by sorting the colors pink and blue. Then I added the yellow and green tissue paper after she finished sorting the blue and pink blocks.
Belle kept taking the blocks off the tissue paper and then putting them back into the zip-lock bag and out again – by doing this she was learning how objects change position depending on where you place them and most importantly if they fit in their position. For example, Belle will now know that these blocks fit into the bag and onto the tissue paper. This is an important skill to learn in spatial recognition with toddlers at that age.
After we finished this activity and Belle got familiar with the ‘color sorting’ activity, I then showed her the pop ice block tray already with colored tissue paper inside.
How to build the color sorting pop ice tray maker:
Place the color tissue paper in each hole and push them further to the end of each hole. I also sticky taped some colored paper onto the top of each hole to label each hole with that color. After this, Belle will be able to place mini blocks into each hole more easily.
So I started by placing the matching colors into the corresponding holes and Belle soon followed suit. She picked up on what we were doing straight away! It’s essential the the activity is modeled before we give the child complete freedom to begin.
After this, watch the child as they sort the blocks into the corresponding colors, it’s totally OK for them to make mistakes at this point. For example Belle wanted to push the mini blocks in and find out how many mini blocks she could fit into each hole – let them play freely for a while with this activity.
I hope your kiddos enjoy this fun activity!
Until next time! 😉