I love to collect bottle caps and lids of all colors and sizes to use in my classroom. Bottle caps and lids make a wonderful resource for art, math, games, and more! The children and I collected tons of lids over the past two years but because I was always in a hurry, I would toss them in a baggie or in a shoe box or in a jar and over time, they were never kept in one place. I finally took the time to gather up most of my bags and boxes and jars of lids and put them into one large plastic jar so we could explore lots of lids in my preschool classroom…
To be honest, this jar still didn’t hold all of the lids I have collected but by the time I filled the jar, I decided I would save the rest of the lids for a new adventure in learning with lids next year. For this year-end activity, I invited my students to begin our exploration by digging through all the lids and sort most of them by color…
Critical Thinking Skills and Decision-Making
Sorting lids by color may seem like a simple math process but for us it was a terrific opportunity to review color words and to use our critical thinking and decision-making skills. The children often had to stop and consider whether a lid had more red or more white and which color of paper it would fit best. The children also had to let me know if they came across a color that we didn’t have a piece of paper out to match like gray, purple, or pink…
Comparing and Contrasting
As the children sorted lids, they would stop and talk about what type of container a lid might have come from or they might talk about the size of a lid. Throughout their discussions, they were comparing and contrasting lids…
Numerical Thinking
Along the way, the children were naturally noticing which color of lids we had the most or least of. They were estimating which colors of lids would need to be stacked up higher because there were going to be far more of those lids than the other lids. The children noticed if there was one lid on the orange paper versus ten lids on the green. Mathematical thinking happens naturally as the children work on processes such as this…
Patience and Perseverance
Sorting all those lids took time too which required lots of patience and perseverance. The children were free to come and go all throughout the day but they knew that by the end of the day, every lid needed to be sorted so our sorting project would be complete…
Cooperation
Sorting lids also required the children to work cooperatively as they found the process went much smoother if everyone worked together to make sure the lids were sorted onto the right color of paper by the end of our day…
Spacial Awareness
By the time most of the lids were sorted on each piece of paper, the children had to do some rearranging and stacking of the lids to help them fit on the paper. We could have easily taken out a second sheet of the same color of paper, but the children were able to make the adjustments and challenging of making the lids fit onto a single sheet of paper per color of lid…
Teamwork
Teamwork is all about working together to accomplish a goal. This process was all about teamwork. By the end of our day, the team had to step it up a bit and finish our goal of sorting every single lid and they did a remarkable job!
Attitude
One of the things I look for when considering if I think children are ready for kindergarten is that can-do attitude and the joyful willingness to jump in and participate with others to accomplish a goal. At any time, one of the children could have said that this process was boring or that they didn’t want to participate but these kids showed each other and me how they have a can-do attitude! …
Time Management and Self-Regulation
As you can see in some of the photos, there were other processes going on throughout the classroom that included the use of our lids. In the process of sorting lids throughout the day, the children were also exploring those other processes. They were free to manage their own time and regulate how to spend their time. I certainly could have set up the lid sorting process with no other choices so the kids wouldn’t have anything else to do but sort lids but part of the experience in my classroom is to always give the children opportunities to regulate and manage their own choices and time as they get things done that is on the agenda for that day…
I will be sharing more on how we continued the process of learning with lids because we definitely had lots of lids to explore!
Available on Amazon