Rainbow sort

In celebration of St. Patrick's Day I planned a rainbow sort for my class.  I found the idea at this website.  I drew up a simple rainbow and gathered all he tubs of toys we had and explained to the kids what we were doing.  As a group we went from one color to the next having a blast finding enough toys for each color.

After the sort we decided to leave the toys that way for a while, but then the kids wanted to play with some of them so I put them all together in a tub for them to 'Play with a Rainbow'.

 

They played with this tub of toys for most of the day and then toward the end of the day we sorted them all back to their original tubs. I will definitely be using this activity again.

Transportation Theme

Last week we talked about transportation.  We started by listing all the kinds of vehicles that can take us places.  They listed everything from wagons, to skis, to hot air balloons and all the traditional types in between. 

When I looked through last years supplies for this theme I found that I had made spaceships, planes, trains, boats,cars, and semi-trucks in different colors and laminated them.  I could not remember what I did with them though.  I hate when I can't remember. Well to make myself feel better I turned them into a magnet sorting game.  I put magnets on the back of the laminated vehicles and drew up a background that showed the different places the vehicles belong, such as space, air, water, tracks, parking lot and roads.  Then the kids can place them where they go and also have fun pretending they are going all over. 

 This is what I drew up.  I have more vehicles then what is shown.  I ended up with 2 spaceships, 3 planes, 4 trains, 4 boats, 3 cars and 2 semi-trucks.  This way of sorting was quite a hit with the kids and when I told them they can pretend the vehicles where going to other places where they normally do not go they would excitedly tell me things like "Teacher look the boat is in outer space!" so cute.