Color Sorting with an Egg Crate - The Southerly Magnolia

As a mother, I am constantly racking my brain in ways that I can make ‘educational’ activities fun. Things come so easy these days for our children with technology (enter the iPad). Although there are educational activities available on computers/iPads, there is just something about having them do hands-on educational activities. Hint: why I LOVE this color sorting with an egg crate activity!

Technology-based activities are so much easier for us mommas. No stressing about putting together or coming up with the activity…all right there with a push of a button. The downside is that too much screen-time is not the best thing for our kids. If my kids spend too much time on an iPad, like around an hour, they become aggressive and zombie-like all at the same time. Then trying to take the iPad away is another scary battle. Ugh!!

Enter hands-on activities for the win! This Color Sorting with an Egg Crate is super SUPER easy and can be put together in less than 5 minutes. You do not have to rush to the store for this one (unless you are out of eggs haha!) I found stuff around the house to put this activity together for my older kids.

How to put this Color Sorting Activity together

You first need to have an egg crate. I cleaned my with soap and water before I let my kids any where near it…I am a germaphobe and the thought of possible salmonella on it made me cringe. So washing it will go! I dried it well and then went to searching for little things that could be sorted. I found pom poms, buttons, beads, little wooden clothes pins, and popsicle sticks. Once I gathered all of these things, I grouped them up by color to see what colors my kids would be sorting.

Then grab markers, sharpies, crayons…whatever is available and color the inside of each egg crate 1 color. This will be where the color sorting will take place 🙂 I went with 6 different color options: pink, blue, green, yellow, purple, and ‘white’. I also cut my egg crate in half to avoid any sibling rivalry with this activity! My son and daughter had their very own sorting crate. I then used the top of the egg crate to hold all the items that needed to be sorted.

With the popsicle sticks, I only colored the ends of the stick 1 color. I used multiple sticks for some of the colors: this is where I added a twist to the color sorting: counting! Another thing I did with the popsicle sticks was write out the color on the sticks themselves. I wanted my kids to practice reading the word of each color. So double whammy with these popsicle sticks 🙂

Set your kids up with their sorting tray and crate and let them get to sorting! My kids had so much fun…well up until they decided to make it into a competition haha!