Children's Activities for Sorting Dyed Noodles
Young children don't need formal instruction to learn math concepts and language skills that will help them throughout their school career. Activities, such as classifying and sorting colored pasta, teach them about important math concepts like size, shape, color and order, while building vocabulary and language skills, too. As an added bonus, manipulating the tiny pieces of pasta develop fine motor skills and improve eye-hand coordination. Fortunately for you, your child is likely to see playing with colored pasta as a lot of fun and will never suspect that its an educational activity.
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Preparation
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Providing a wide selection of colored noodles and pasta to your child adds fun and challenge to sorting and sequencing. Look for unusual shapes and sizes, such as small, medium and large shells, favorite cartoon characters and an assortment of noodles with holes. You can find packages of assorted pasta shapes in the grocery store, but small macaroni and cheese boxes are also a good choice as they often come in kid-friendly shapes you won't find in grownup versions of pasta and noodles. The variety in shapes and sizes offers plenty of challenge and offers opportunity for building language skills as you discuss them.
Sorting by Attributes
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Attributes of the colored noodles include their size, shape and color or any other observable characteristics, such as those with round edges, those that are flat, or noodles with or without holes. Begin with the obvious, like color or shape, and encourage your child to sort the noodles and pasta according to one attribute. As she gets the hang of it, increasing the difficulty also tends to increase the fun. Challenge her to sort according to less obvious characteristics, such as noodles that are light blue or have crinkly edges. This helps her with observation and visual skills too as she searches for less obvious attributes. Eventually your child will learn to sort by more than one attribute, such as sorting blue butterflies or red stars.
Sequencing
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Nearly all children enjoy practicing sequencing. Sequencing can be as simple as alternating colors, such as blue and red, but can be done with any characteristic of the pasta. By modeling how sequencing works and talking about what you are doing, your child will soon be creating sequences with several attribute and broadening her language skills too. Make a sample and ask your child to duplicate it. This will teach her to recognize and duplicate patterns.
Crafts
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Colored noodles or pasta are ideal for crafts that involve stringing and threading and allow your child to put his sorting and sequencing skills to work, while helping to develop his fine motor and eye-hand coordination skills too. Pasta with holes make inexpensive "beads" for threading and stringing to make bracelets and necklaces. Other options include providing your child with a outline of a simple picture, think butterflies and flowers or common shapes like stars and hearts, and allowing him to fill it in with sorted pasta to create blocks of color or texture for the picture. This does involve glue, of course, but with a little guidance even toddlers can work with white, washable glue.
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