Color Sorting Box | Still Playing School

Color Sorting Box

By Devany | Labels: , ,
Our recycled DIY color sorting box was a huge hit with our preschooler! Set out with plenty of fun materials to sort, this fine motor exercise was highly motivating for her.

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I'm always brainstorming ways we can repurpose our recyclables.  We have plenty of clementine boxes which are sturdy wooden crates.  I store art supplies in most of them but this time I used one to make a color sorting box for fine motor work.  The invitation to explore included colored pompoms, pony beads, colored craft sticks, and kid chopsticks that work like tweezers.


Creating the box was super simple.  I traced along the holes (which are already in the bottom of the box) with colored Sharpies.  I added the color words for my early reader to review.


She pointed to and read all of the color words before she began.  She choose the pompoms to sort first.


The pompoms were extra fun because they would fit perfectly in the holes.  E set them all up then took turns saying the colors and pushing them down into the box.  What excellent fine motor work!


Next she picked the pony beads.  She used the chopsticks to pick them up.  We put a baking dish under the box to collect the beads.  She loved the sound them made as they plunked down in!


She did some investigating to see where the beads and pompoms went once they were sorted!


The craft sticks were very fun to sort.  E tried different ways of holding the sticks as she fit them through the holes working different small hand muscles which is one of our goals!


I was amazed at how long E worked at this simple color sorting activity!  She played for at least an hour. I look forward to revisiting it soon with other materials like pipe cleaners, ribbon, and jewels!



We love participating each week in Fine Motor Fridays!  Joining together with other bloggers we bring you the best educational and entertaining activities to work fine motor muscles!  You won't want to miss the rest of these Fine Motor Friday posts by my co-hosts:

Winter Cotton Ball Crafts from P is for Preschooler

Color Sorting Activity with Velcro from School Time Snippets

Rainbow Scissor Skills & Color Matching from Little Bins for Little Hands


Tiny Pom Pom Fine Motor Skills from Powerful Mothering


Shamrock Garland from Stir the Wonder

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4 comments :

  1. You're right - you could change this up every once in a while with any little thing that would fit in the holes! I love that this hones color matching and reading the color words too!

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  2. Love your photos! And Yay! for an activity that kept your daughter busy for quite a while : ) So many ways to change up the manipulatives, so you will get plenty of use from this!

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  3. I love that you used the clementine box. It will hold up to a lot of playtime. Thank you for sharing in the Discover & Explore linky. I'm featuring this post today.

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  4. Brilliant idea, and it's home-made! Fantastic.

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