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Autumn Leaves and Gems Colour Sorting Activity

October 8, 2014 by Anna Ranson

Set out this gorgeous Autumn colour sorting activity for preschoolers using leaves and coloured glass gems. Open-ended creativity and playful maths game for little ones, plus just so beautiful to play with!

Invitation to sort and match gems to Autumn leaves

I love collecting tactile objects for loose materials to let the kids play and learn with. We keep spiky pine cones, smooth pebbles, shiny shells and gorgeous glass nuggets in various wooden bowls and baskets for them to use for counting, creative art projects and more.

I recently stumbled across these gorgeous glass nuggets in an array of Autumnal colours via a seller on Amazon, and needed to add them to our collection for the season (and beyond!)

Here is a link to find them for UK/ Aussie readers:

And here are similar ones for US readers:

Amber: http://bit.ly/1scKXSv

Green: http://bit.ly/1BTl4ID with more colours to browse on the site.

 

Coloured glass gems for Autumn loose parts play

When they arrived I mixed them all together and popped them in a lovely wooden bowl with wooden scoopers (which I picked up £4 for a pair in Sainsburys recently) to invite them to play with them.

Onto a table top we spread out an array of recently collected leaves, ranging from green to yellow, brown to red in a beautiful natural rainbow!

Coloured leaves and gems matching activity for kids

They then set about sorting through the coloured glass pebbles to match the hues as closely as they could to those found in the leaves, arranging them in their own ways by counting or grouping.Autumn leaves and coloured gems colour sorting

They all loved this activity (ages 2, 4 and 6 years) and Miss 2 was perhaps the most absorbed of al, choosing to spend over half an hour with it, and coming back again later to do more.Colour sorting and matching with autumn leaves and glass gems

The rests were just so stunningly beautiful that I spent a png time watching her, and enjoyed joining in too (when I was allowed to!)

Autumn leaves colour matching activity

This is a transient creative project because our leaves won’t keep for long, although we are going to try laminating some of them to see if we can preserve those colours a little longer. I’m envisaging this as being a beautiful Spring time project with colourful flowers too.

Matching gems and leaves activity

To see our full PLAYFUL MATHS archives, click the link.

See more NATURE PLAY here.

Our full AUTUMN archives are here.

You can also follow my Natural Play Pinterest board for more open-ended play ideas using nature.
Follow Anna @ The Imagination Tree’s board Nature Play and Creatvity on Pinterest.

What they are learning while they play:

maths: sorting and matching by colour, counting, 1:1 correspondence, grouping

physical: fine motor control, pincer grasp, transferring small objects

[This post contains Amazon affiliate links.]

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Filed Under: Age, Art, Art, Colours, Create, Creativity, Fall, Heuristic Play, Invitations to Play, Learn, Leaves, Loose Parts, Math, Montessori, Motor Skills, Natural Play, Nature, Preschooler, Reggio Emilia, School Age, Sorting and Matching Tagged With: Autumn, Fall, Playful Maths, Preschool Activities

« Autumn Salt Dough Recipe
Cinnamon Salt Dough Leaf Ornaments »

Comments

  1. Melanie @ Offspringers says

    October 8, 2014 at 11:47 pm

    A gorgeous idea….I’m going to give this a try!

  2. Enmore Green Childcare says

    October 9, 2014 at 10:00 am

    I love these gems but the link to the UK supplier is missing and I’m having no luck browsing Amazon! Thanks for the ideas as always 🙂

  3. Sam Price says

    October 9, 2014 at 12:12 pm

    What a calming and stimulating invitation to play Anna. My daughter will love it as she adores loose object play and autumn!!!
    Glass nuggets are by a seller called hobby island mosaics on amazon and I think what Anna has used is combination of three of the colour ways they do. I just added them to my amazon wish list!!!

    • Enmore Green Childcare says

      October 9, 2014 at 12:25 pm

      Thank you Sam!

  4. Literate For Life (Pamela Hall) says

    October 13, 2014 at 5:15 am

    I just love this activity and the colors. This is so perfect for this age.

  5. Kellie says

    October 13, 2014 at 5:47 pm

    This is such a wonderful activity and it provides so many opportunities for learning and making brain connections. Autumn is my favourite time of year too. Nothing beats walking through a pile of fallen leaves.

  6. Ann says

    November 21, 2014 at 8:22 am

    Anna – may I just say, you’re a genius! I have seen lots of websites on age-appropriate and fun activities for kids but yours is the “awesomest”!!! (made up a word) You are a blessing and inspiration for Early Childhood Educators and moms like me.

    Thank you for sharing yourself to the world! 🙂

  7. ugg australia noira usa says

    December 12, 2014 at 7:12 pm

    Hello! Do you know if they make any plugins to safeguard against hackers? I’m kinda paranoid about losing everything I’ve worked hard on. Any tips?

Trackbacks

  1. Enjoying Autumn - Stimulating Learning | Stimulating Learning says:
    October 18, 2014 at 8:49 am

    […] Matching coloured glass nuggets to the colour of real leaves (an idea I got from the fabulous Imagination Tree here)… […]

  2. Amy Beth | Something to Try says:
    November 20, 2014 at 5:13 am

    […] love it when an educational activity is also gorgeous. This fall color sorting activity from The Imagination Tree is such a good […]

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About The Imagination Tree Hello and welcome! I'm Anna, Mama of 4, early years teacher and play enthusiast from the UK! Click here to read more about me.

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