Veronika has sorted colors into separate bins before, and it’s a task she’s become quite skilled at. This new twist on the activity has an added advantage because it incorporates gross motor skills and movement, too! Our play tunnel that has been open in the living room all weekend, so today I thought we could use it for a little learning before folding it up.

This required a little parental set-up on the front end. I emptied a few toy storage bins and taped down a piece of paper in the bottom of each with the name of a color, as well as a square colored in marker in that corresponding color.

We started out just using red and blue because I wanted to be sure Veronika understood the concept before adding more colors. Stacking blocks from Mega Bloks or Duplo are perfect for this game. I showed her the labeled bins and then we ran around to the other side of the tunnel where a jumble of blue and red blocks were waiting. “Can you put the red ones in the red bin?” I asked her, offering up a red block.

At first she wanted to run around the tunnel, but after I tossed the blocks inside it, she got the idea to crawl through with block in hand. She had her victory target in sight…

Slam dunk!

To be honest, she didn’t always crawl through, sometimes taking the long way around on her feet. But this was always at a run, so it sure still counted as movement play!

We expanded to orange and yellow blocks next, giving her four choices of bin for each block as she reached the end. When we finished with the sorting activity, she kept busy with all the materials for a while, moving items from bin to tunnel to storage bag to floor and back again.