Sorting by Attributes

This week in math, we learned about sorting and attributes. We learned that attributes are words that describe: color, size, shape, texture, etc. We connected back to science by reviewing our five senses and what we learned about properties of objects. The first day, each student brought a ball to school and created a circle map of words that described their balls. Then we charted the words. Then we went back and categorized the words in groups such as color, size, shape, texture, etc.

Then someone came into our room on Monday evening and mixed up our math manipulatives. We had to use what we learned about attributes the day before to sort them. After sorting several ways, students recorded one sort in their math journals and labeled with the attribute.

Then we read The Button Box and discussed all the different ways they sorted buttons in the story. Then students worked in small groups to sort buttons.

On Thursday, the students were presented with a problem. They were given a bag of "cookies" and 4 plates. They had to sort the cookies by 1 attribute and make sure everyone got the same number of cookies on their plate. They had a lot of fun guessing and checking.