Color Sorting Cups

While perusing Pinterest, as I so often do during naptime, I came across this neat idea for color sorting cups.  My little guy turned 2 in October, and we've been working on colors lately.  I thought this might give him a good hands on way to learn more about his colors.  So to Wally-World we did go!  In addition to my Revlon Red nail polish, we also threw in to the cart the following items:
 

Take&Toss Plastic Cups w/Lids, Colorful Buttons, X-Acto Knife

Beebo (yeah, that's his nickname - I'll tell ya all about it sometime, promise) was pretty excited to get his colorful buttons home and make a big giant mess!  But he was not too happy when he learned that mama was going to cut holes in his cups.  No worries little guy, it's all part of the plan.  Using the largest sized buttons as a guide, I cut slits in the lids so the buttons could drop in to the cups.

I wanted the hole in to the lid large enough so the big button could slip through, but the smaller buttons would stay in the cups when the bowl was tipped over.  Because, let's face it, as soon as this cup is full of buttons it will turn in to a maraca.  I finished the yellow cup and moved on to the next color.  Using the yellow lid as a guide, I marked the next lid with a Sharpie marker so I knew where to cut.

 

It was about this time that I realized the cups did not all have matching lids.  In fact, the only matching set was yellow.  The rest of the cups were all blue and green, and the lids were orange and red.  What the what?!  Okay, no need to panic.  Just needed to rethink my plan of action.

I determined that I would let the Beebs play with the yellow, blue, and green button cups with lids off.  That way he could drop buttons right in to the cups. Things could get messy, but hey, that's life!

 

He had a pretty good time with that, but we did run in to one little hang-up.  The buttons that we bought came with two shades of blue, which he found sort of confusing.  So I took one set of blue out and left the others.
 

 

After that, he quickly got the hang of which buttons went in which cups.
 

 

When he had those three colors down pretty well, I put those away and introduced the red and orange button cups.  I was able to leave the lids on those cups and just explain to him to drop the orange buttons in the cup with the orange lid, red goes with red, etc.

 

 

This was a fun and quick project, and the best part is they store really easily.  Once we're done with our buttons they go in the matching cups with the lids on and get stacked up in the craft cupboard.  Of course, buttons are still pretty small and little folks like to put small things in their mouths, so this project should be used with adult supervision only.  I'll be on the lookout for cups with matching lids, but for the time being this is working out pretty well and helping my little guy learn his colors fast!