Sorting lids by color

This is Q's favorite work right now. She loves her lids! I always be sure they are replaced on the shelf with the correct colored lids in the corresponding cup so she begins to notice that all the green lids go in the green cup, etc. She likes to take them all out one by one or by dumping and replace them again. She does not yet pay much attention to the color, but when I work with her, I always point it out. She has started noticing the environmental print, though! Two of the red lids are from strawberry jam and strawberry body cream, and she always points to them and says, "sawbery!"

Sidenote: I always save the lids off of everything. I have a plastic box in Q's playroom cupboard that I store them in. Milk lids, spaghetti sauce lids, all lids! They come in so handy for a variety of activities and you will see me using them a lot!

We can also count the lids in this activity and do some size comparison between big and little lids.

Older children could handle more colors at once, but younger children typically do best with just a few. I chose blue because it's most familiar to Q (she can recognize blue things), red because it's my favorite, and green because it's spring!!!

Two year olds and preschoolers could turn this into a game--take turns drawing a lid from the pile in the middle that matches your color cup. The last person to take a lid is the winner!