It goes without saying that most kids love activities that include mud and slime and delight in the opportunity to get dirty. Swamp Animal Sorting is a fun and messy activity that supports cognitive development.
What is Cognitive Development?
Cognitive development focuses on developing functions of the brain such as thinking, learning, awareness, judgment, and processing information. According to developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, children go through several stages of cognitive development and learning activities for toddlers and children should correspond to the appropriate developmental.
From birth through the age of 2, children are in the Sensorimotor Stage. In this stage, children learn through sensation and movement. From ages of 2-7, children are in the Pre-Operational Stage. 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 are developed.
This lesson plan includes not only the preparation instructions, procedure, and materials list for this activity, but also the age appropriate learning objectives and a sample of the simple supporting verbal cues necessary to encourage participation and support learning.
List of materials
- Big and small plastic alligators
- One large plastic container (to be used as the swamp)
- Two plastic containers for sorting
- Mud or potting soil
- Small fishnets
Preparation:
In a large container, create a swamp of mud and water. Place large and small plastic swamp animals in the swamp. Place fishnets nearby so that the children can fish for the animals with them. Place two containers nearby for sorting.
Procedure:
Invite the children over to the swamp. Explain to them that they will be collecting (fishing for) alligators. Encourage the children to collect big and small alligators with the net. After they are caught, encourage the children to sort the alligators into two containers; one for big alligators and one for small alligators.
Objective 1: To develop an understanding of classification by encourage children to sort animals by size
- Verbal Cue A: Can you sort the animals into big and small?
- Verbal Cue B: Let’s put the big animals in one container and the small animals in another one.
Objective 2: To teach about relationships using the terms small, big, and bigger
- Verbal cue A: Let’s collect all of the small animals and place them in this container.
- Verbal Cue B: Which alligator is bigger?
Objective 3: To introduce the number concept of 1-10
- Verbal Cue A: Let’s count the number of small alligators
- Verbal Cue B: Let’s count the number of large alligators
Kids will have a blast while learning important cognitive skills such as sorting and classification. For more information on preschool lesson plans see Online Preschool Lesson Plans.
