Let's
Begin the Game
The
Categories Game
Young
children make sense of the objects in the world by
putting them into
categories. Indeed, a baby's earliest
experiences with nursery rhymes,
finger play songs and
books often involve concepts of shapes, colors and size.
Educational
toys also teach these concepts
as
forms fit
into boards, shapes into sorters and smaller containers are
nested inside larger ones.
The following game
is designed to
teach your child how
objects not only fit into a category but that they can fit
into
more than one at the same time.
How to Play
This game may be
played in two
different ways. I recommend
printing out the pages. Read the directions
and
ask your child
to point to the
answers. Each
page has one picture that was
seen on the previous page. Ask your child
to find this picture.
This will help her to develop
visual memory and realize that
although an object such as a ball is on
the "round" page, it can
also be on the "green" page.
Your child might
also enjoy clicking
on the answer after you
read the directions. The correct answer will
appear when
clicked. She may also click on
the category word in the sentence
below and the two pictures in this
category will appear. Ask
your child to name as many objects as she can in these
categories.
Point to or gather the objects in the environment that fit into
these categories.
Children
are
never too young to look
at pictures. Point to,
name and describe the objects in this game and
other books.
This will help babies as young
as 10-12 months of age to develop
the skills to attend to pictures and
categorize
over the next couple
of years. Younger children can play this game by pointing
to a
picture as you name it or describe only one characteristic such
as the
shape. Older children can play the game by
finding the
one picture that fits into both categories such as the "round" and
"green" ball.
Child
Development
Between
12 and 18 months of age
children demonstrate an
understanding of color and size as they explore
form boards
and place smaller
plastic containers
inside larger ones. They
also learn how to point to the named objects
in the environment
or in pictures. The "Where is Pointer?" song
is also popular
for this age group.
Between 15 and 18 months children can
typically identify which
objects are not exactly the same as other
objects in a group.
During the
second half of this year,
children learn to match
animals to their sounds and of course, many
toys, books and
songs reinforce
these associations.
  
Matching
skills develop in a
sequential order. Children learn
to first match identical (preferably
familiar) objects to objects
between 15-19 months. Next they learn to match objects to
pictures between 19 and 27 months.
Photographs are easier to
match than drawings. Children
typically learn to match similar
pictures of objects between 30 and 36
months. The popular
game Lotto reinforces
skills
to match drawings of familiar objects.
At around this time children also
learn to sort into groups of
identical objects. It is easiest to start teaching this skill using
groups of very different
objects such as clothespins, apples
and toy animals. Then try more
similar objects such as apples,
bananas and blueberries
(which share the category of food).
Between 24 and 30 months
children
learn to match the circle,
triangle and square shapes and match colors-
(first black and
white; primary
colors a bit
later between 29-33 months). Two-
year-olds also start to
identify objects with their use- i.e. the
brush is for getting the
tangles out of the hair.
As children reach close to
three years
of age, they develop
the skills to look at a group of three simple
pictures of objects
and identify which two are the same. Between three and three
and a half years of age they learn
to sort colors and complete
3-4 piece puzzles. These early
discrimination skills will help
children to play the "Categories
Game".
Let's
Begin the Game
Resource:
Hawaii Early Learning
Profile (HELP)
VORT
corporation,
Palo Alto,
California 94306
1985
©2008 Barbara Smith
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