Valentine’s Day heart sorting is a fun daycare activity that supports cognitive development and teaches sorting and classification.
What is Cognitive Development?
Cognitive development is the construction of thought processes, including remembering, problem solving, and decision-making, as it develops from childhood adulthood. According to developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, children go through several stages of cognitive development so it is critical that learning activities for toddlers and children correspond to the appropriate developmental.
The Sensorimotor Stage spans from birth through the age of 2. In this stage, children learn through sensation and movement. The Pre-Operational stage occurs from ages of 2-7. At this point they are learning to use symbols such as language to represent objects, and beginning to understand the concept of conservation. It is also the phase in which memory and imagination develops.
This lesson plan includes preparation instructions, procedures, and materials list for this activity. There are also age appropriate learning objectives and a sample of the simple supporting verbal cues necessary to encourage participation and support learning.
List of Activity Materials
Large Felt Board
Red Felt
Heart templates (optional)
Scissors
Activity Preparation
Trace hearts in various sizes (some large and some small) on a large piece of red felt. You may also use heart templates to trace the hearts on the felt. Cut the hearts out the felt. Arrange them randomly on a large felt board.
Procedure
Invite the children over to the felt board. Explain to them that they will be sorting hearts and arranging them from biggest to smallest. Encourage the children to place the heart cut outs in graduated order from biggest to smallest. After they are arranged, encourage the children to sort the hearts into two categories, placing big hearts on one side of the board and small hearts on the other. Next ask them to count the number of hearts in each group.
Objective 1: To develop an understanding of classification by encouraging children to sort hearts by size.
Verbal Cue A: Can you sort the hearts into big and small?
Verbal Cue B: Let’s put the large hearts on this side of the board and the small hearts on the other side.
Objective 2: To teach about relationships using the terms small, big, and bigger
Verbal cue A: Let’s arrange all of the hearts in order from big to small.
Verbal Cue B: Which heart is bigger: This heart or this heart?
Objective 3: To introduce the number concept of 1-10
Verbal Cue A: Let’s count the number of small hearts.
Verbal Cue B: How many small hearts are there?
Through play children are learning important cognitive skills such as sorting and classification. For more information on preschool lesson plans see Online Preschool Lesson Plans.
Carla Snuggs - As a writer for Suite101.com since 2005, it is a privilege to continue on as theTopic Editor for the subject of Day Care. I received a ...
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