Wooden Fruit Sorting Set

Another OT favourite with so many learning opportunities throughout different stages of development. Brightly coloured fruit pieces in a wooden sorting tray with different dividers. Sorting cards that fit into the sorting tray, wooden numbers 0-9. Bowl and store away in the bag. Wooden tweezers and a spoon makes for a game that kids will play without even knowing they are learning. 

Why we like this:

• A variety of fine motor tools (tweezers and spoon) are included for fine motor development, but don’t forget the pincer grip is best for picking up the fruit.
• The wooden fruit are brightly coloured and looks amazingly real. This can also be included in imaginary play.
• As a beginner maths set, this set address all the pre-maths development areas: sorting, matching, patterns, groups, basic calculations
• The divider is removable. Take out the divider, place one of the sorting cards in the bottom of the plate, put the divider back in, and go to work sorting by colour, fruit type, or number of pieces.
• Use the fruit, without the sorting plate, and line up a pattern on the table, such as apple, lemon, strawberry, orange.  Ask the child to match the shapes. How many lines can they make before they run out of pieces
• Ask the child to cup one or both hands and hold them in that position as you drop the fruit pieces one at a time into the palms. Count as you go. How many can they hold? Go again and try for one more.
• Place one piece of fruit at a time in the child’s palm and ask them to push it to the fingertips without dropping to sort into the
• Ask the child to cup one hand and pick the fruit up one at a time and drop into their own palm. How many can they hold? Next reverse hands and repeat. See if they can hold at least one more without dropping.
• Skip the sorting cards. Mix up the fruit. Ask the child to find and place pieces into the sorting tray, one at a time sorting by colour, fruit type, favourite fruit, shape, etc.
• Give verbal directions of a sequence of fruit to add to a sequence. Ask the individual to remember the sequence and add the fruit.
• Reinforce colours by always naming the colour first when talking about each fruit.
• Make a line of two or more pieces of fruit. Ask the child to look at it to remember. Verbally rehearse the pieces in order to aid in memorization. Cover the pieces and ask the child to build a matching line of pieces. Remove the cover and see if they are correct. If not, can they spot the mistake and correct it? Add more and more to the line as the child’s ability to remember increases. 
• Add some real fruit to the game and match the real and pretend play fruit. Talk about apples, the different colours and tastes, the seeds, how people eat them, how they grow, etc. Then eat a slice or two (a sweet and a tart). Talk about lemons, their colour, sourness, seeds, how they grow, lemonade, etc. Then eat a piece.

• 1 x wooden sorting bowl with divider
• 1 x tweezer
• 1 wooden spoon
• 7 x sorting activity cards
• 1 set of wooden numbers 0-9 with -x = signs
• 50 fruit pieces (10 designs)