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How to Nurture a Heart for Learning in Your Child – Sorting and Organizing

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how to nurture a heart for learning in your childComing up with chores for older kids is relatively easy, but did you ever think about building your preschooler’s thinking skills while putting them to work with things you need done anyway? Preschool learning combines so many things about sorting and grouping to build math skills, reasoning skills, and even reading skills depending on what they are sorting. Organizational skills are included in this group, too.

If your house is anything like mine, it is full of things that get stuffed places rather than put away, which often provides the perfect opportunity for preschool learning.

Do you have a junk drawer? This is often a perfect place to start. Mine is full of rubber bands, paper clips, phone charging cords, ear buds, and countless other things. Pull everything out of the junk drawer and have your preschooler group things together. Sometimes, you can break things down further from there. For instance, if you have several sizes of paper clips, those can be sorted, and so can rubber bands by thickness. The junk drawer is a great place to accomplish something that you need done while your preschooler is learning at the same time.paper-clip-400821_1280

What about your battery stash? Kids’ toys require so many batteries these days so batteries are plentiful in my house. My battery bin used to be organized by size, but of course, kids just pick through looking for what they need without putting the ones they don’t need back the way they were. As a result, I have a shoebox full of all the batteries thrown in together. Do you have this, too? Put your preschooler to work sorting them again.

Do you have an assortment of screws and nails? These things have a very organized system in my house. At least until someone dumped my storage unit over and now EVERYTHING is all thrown all into one box. With the mess I have, my preschoolers won’t be able to get it sorted completely, but they can certainly separate the screws from the nails and get them sorted to similar sizes. This is a great project for them and for me! Maybe you have the same thing.

Shoes. Do shoes multiply in your home like they do in mine? Shoes that multiply and several people who are coming and going all the time can make for a shoe nightmare! What better a chore for a preschooler than to pair the shoes each evening and put them where they need to go.

Do you have a houseful of books for various levels of children? I have teens down to babies and all the books to go along with those ages and everything in between. I have books in several places throughout my house, and it is so much easier for kids to find something they want to read if like books are with like books. I will often have my preschoolers separate the board books from the easy readers, chapter books, and more adult books. books-684632_1280

Pantry items. Keeping a clean and orderly pantry is so hard in our house. Is it in yours? We have a decent sized “walk-in” style pantry with wire shelving. Because the shelving can’t take a huge amount of weight, we keep all the cans underneath the shelves on the floor. Over time, the soup gets mixed in the the vegetables, which gets mixed in with the enchilada sauce, evaporated milk, and so on. Preschoolers can take care of all the sorting while you put the cans (or whatever needs sorting) back in the places you want them. Have them sort first, then, your job is so much easier. They have also learned some along the way.

Next time you are looking for something to “teach” your preschooler, take a look around at what needs to get done that they can do. Finding things to organize like toy shelves, coloring things (my markers always get mixed in with the colored pencils), and bookshelves is usually relatively easy if you have more than one child and a busy family. Before you start a project such as this on your own, shift your thinking to somehow adjust the task so your preschooler can take part in it.

The ideas above are all great things to get you started thinking outside the box a bit on household tasks. Getting your preschooler involved is a win-win!

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