Hands-On Color Sorting Activity with Pipe Cleaners

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Learning to sort, group, and organize objects in our world is an important skill for early learning. Students will sort and organize items by color in this hands-on color sorting activity with pipe cleaners and pony beads. More advanced students can practice creating patterns for a challenge.

Our brain likes to put things into categories and build connections between categories as we learn. My hands-on activity helps kids practice these concepts in a non-threatening way. Sorting and classifying prepares students to begin working with numbers. When you are finished with our hands-on color sorting activity, you can make these creations into bracelets for your student to wear.

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Hands-On Activities Build Important Skills

As a busy mom averse to messes, it’s pretty tempting to skip hands-on activities like this. Believe me, I know. But, as your student places beads on the chenille stems (or marshmallows on toothpicks), she’s also working on fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Both of these skills are essential for development and every bit of practice helps. As an adult, I often wish I had better hand-eye coordination. It starts young!

Look how happy he is with the sorted purple beads. That was an accomplishment! Stringing beads is not an easy task for this age group, so be sure to praise your child’s hard work. Because he is younger I did not ask him to create a pattern. Just getting those purple beads onto the purple pipe cleaner was enough. This is sorting and classifying at its finest.

As you can tell from this picture, stringing beads on a pipe cleaner also takes focus and concentration. These are also very important skills for a preschool child. She’s placing her beads onto the chenille stem in a pattern. Clear beads alternate with opaque beads. Patterning is a great way to make this activity more challenging for older or more advanced students.

Nurture Natural Interests

Sometimes patterning clicks with certain children and becomes something they want to explore. If your student is all about those patterns, allow the child to use multiple colors so that he or she can create more complex patterns.

The brainpower needed to come up with and duplicate more complex patterns is worth the time it will take you to sort the beads back into their bins later. If you have one of these kids, you will want to get the book Pattern Bugs.

If you have a child who loves bright shiny sparkly things, look for beads with a little bit of sparkle. Catering to a child’s preferences and interests isn’t spoiling. Instead, its making learning more relevant for your child. This is an incredibly valuable tool for any teacher.

What Else Can You Do with Pony Beads?

That is one huge container of pony beads, so of course, my mind is already spinning with ideas of how to use them for more learning activities. You can use pony beads for counting, adding or subtracting, and all kinds of math activities. You can also save them to make necklaces and other crafts. Pony beads are great decorations for hair braids! Also, a big pile of pony beads would make a great foundation for a sensory bin in place of rice.

Materials for Hands-On Color Sorting Activity

I love these bright and colorful pony beads and pipe cleaners. They match perfectly and brighten up my day just looking at the picture. The bowl is just to help you keep beads off the floor. Place a few beads at a time in the bowl for your child and keep that easily-dumped tray out of reach!

I do not recommend you attempt a substitution for the pipe cleaner. Pipe cleaners have a unique fuzzy texture that grabs the pony beads and helps keep them in place. Nothing is more frustrating to a young child than stringing twenty beads onto a shoestring only to have them all fall off the other end.

• colored pipe cleaners (also called chenille stems)
• matching color beads
• bowl

Instructions for the Hands-On Color Sorting Activity

1. Provide one of each color pipe cleaner per student.
2. For each color pipe cleaner you have, place the same color beads into a bowl. (For younger learners just place a few of each color into the bowl, for advanced learners place more.)
3. Ask your learner how they could sort the beads?
4. Make a knot on one end of the pipe cleaners just to be safe.
5. Have your learner sort the beads by color, by threading them onto the corresponding color pipe cleaner.
6. For advanced learners, if you have more than one type of bead in each color (shiny, sparkly, plain, etc) ask if they can think of a way to sort the different types on the same pipe cleaner (all the different types together, in a pattern, etc).