Readiness for Kindergarten – Learning Fun At Home/Laundry

Sorting the laundry can be a readiness for kindergarten activity. The laundry can help your child learn some basics like size and colors, in addition to categorizing and vocabulary (see yesterday’s post).

To help your child with the concepts of size use some of the clothes in the laundry. Towels and facecloths are often 3 sizes–small, medium and big. Size can also be relative, depending on what things we are comparing. Kids’ tee-shirts are small like the kids in the house. Grown-ups tee-shirts are larger because…?

The laundry can be as colorful as a rainbow. Many kindergarten readiness checklists include being able to identify colors. This gives teachers an idea of a child’s level of thinking skills. Colors are a tricky concept. Many objects can be the same color; apples, socks, berries, cars, etc can all be red but the red color can be quite different each time. There’s tremendous variation for each color. In order for children to learn a color they need to see lots of things that are each color and lots that aren’t. Colors are not objects; they are ideas, abstract not concrete.  Kids who are struggling with colors may be struggling with other concepts, too.

Ask your child about the colors of clothes in the basket. When doing the laundry, the trick with colors is having clothes the same color when they come out as when they went in! Would you agree that learning comes in all sizes and colors?

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