Cian (16 months) has started showing an interest in matching colours. We used his gear toy as a jigsaw, to reinforce some colour matching.
Resources
- Rainbow Caterpillar Gear Toy by Melissa and Doug
- Basket
Method
I put the coloured gears in the basket. Cian looked in the basket to find the pieces and match them to the caterpillar’s colours. As he did I named each colour, to reinforce the colour names.
He wandered off to look in the book basket, so I encouraged him to come back and complete the task.
I left this out and he kept coming back to this throughout the morning. He ended up climbing on to the coffee table to work. Look at the deep concentration.
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He enjoyed tipping the gears off and doing it over and over again, giving himself a round of applause each time he completed it.
DfES Outcomes for EYFS (2013)
Communication and language
Listening and attention (16 to 26 months)
- Selects familiar objects by name and will go and find objects when asked, or identify objects from a group.
- Understands simple sentences (e.g. ‘Throw the ball’.)
Mathematics
Numbers (16 to 26 months)
- Beginning to organise and categorise objects, e.g. putting all the teddy bears together or teddies and cars in separate piles.
Shape, space and measures (16 to 26 months)
- Attempts, sometimes successfully, to fit shapes in to spaces or inset boards or jigsaw puzzles.