🧩 Nursery · Thinking & feelings · Ages 3–4 · about 3 weeks Dates: to

Patterns and Sorting

Goal: Sort things by one rule and copy and continue simple repeating patterns.

For parents: Sorting and patterns are early maths thinking: spotting what is the same, what is different, and what comes next.

Do together

  1. Sock and spoon pattern

    You need: Whole socks and large spoons

    On the floor, make a row: sock, spoon, sock, spoon. Let your child continue it. Point to each item and say the pattern together. Try a different two-item pattern another day.

  2. Laundry sort

    You need: Clean washing

    Sort into piles: socks and shirts, big clothes and small clothes, or each person's clothes. Ask 'How did you sort them?'

  3. Clap, stamp, clap, stamp

    You need: Nothing

    Do an action pattern and let them join in and continue. Try clap-clap-stamp once they are good at it.

Talk about it

  • Which one does not belong? Why?
  • What comes next in the pattern?
  • How else could we sort these?

Words to use

  • same
  • different
  • sort
  • pattern
  • next
  • group

Play (optional)

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We noticed:

wasilearn.com/learn/nursery/patterns-and-sorting · free home learning, ages 2–7