Sorting Games for Toddlers: Clothespin Sorting and Matching Games

Are you looking for something fun to do with your toddler that is also educational? Sorting games are a great way to teach early organizational and categorizing skills. This can come in handy later on, when you want your child to pick up his/her toys, but it is also the precursor to understanding math and a variety of other subjects such as science, where things are categorized according to properties and characteristics.

Even children as young as 18 months can learn to sort. They certainly won't be as good at it as an older child, but with patience and a helping hand, you can make sure that your little one has a lot of fun while learning. The tasks can be made more complicated as the child grows, here we'll look at three levels of games.

Clothespin Sorting

You'll Need: Colored, plastic clothespins, an egg carton or plastic bowls

This game is pretty easy. You just have to separate the colors into the bowls. To start your toddler off, drop one color into each bowl so he has something to base the selections on. For little ones, use just two colors and move up to three or four as they improve.

Once you've sorted the clothespins, you can use them clipped to one another to create unique sculptures. This adds to the fun of using clothespins for sorters, but really, there's no reason you can't use colored anything, blocks, game pieces, etc.

It's Just the Same

You'll Need: Duplicates of three or four photos, the photos can be of anything you like that captures your child's interest. Lotto cards work as well, if you have three or more copies of each card.

Scatter the photos or cards out on the table and have your child sort them into piles. All the photos of the dog go in one pile, etc.

Like with Like

You'll Need: Lotto or homemade cards with people, cars and animals on them.

This game is a bit more complicated. You might have just a couple of each category. For example, dump out the cards in front of your child and pick out a person. Put the person on the floor in front of you and ask him to give you more people. Do the same with cars in another pile and animals in another. It can take a bit of time for your little one to get the hang of this, but it is well worth it, since he will enjoy the game greatly once he understands the concept!