Opposites Sorting

Activity Overview

What is the opposite of big? What is the opposite of hot? What is the opposite of slow? Teaching young learners about opposites is a natural tool that adults use when having a conversation with a child. It may feel completely natural and intuitive when you are talking to your own child, but what is really happening during those brief discussions? While children are searching the world for a new pairing, they are challenged to encounter new ideas, words, and phrases as part of the process. This is why a lot of work using opposites in early childhood is a natural tool for building literacy skills like language acquisition and sentence structure. This search for new ideas also helps foster independent inquiry, which builds observational skills, and as students continue to work with opposites, they will be asked to follow more and more multi step problem solving tasks. Not only do they first need to find an object, but they then need to categorize the object, identify characteristics, and find another object that has an opposite characteristic. This activity relies on students not just identifying what an opposite might be or finding something that looks like an opposite, but actually creating an opposite with their own body. Children benefit from integrating different styles of learning into activities; in this case the combination of gross motor movement with a math and literacy concept. Have fun, move around, and remember to be patient, sometimes opposites are hard!

What You Need

• Pocket Piggies Opposites! by Richard Austin

• Opposites by Cydney Weingart

• Panda Opposites by Suzi Eszterhas

• 5-8 objects to be gathered from around your home

• Opposite Sets Cards (please print and cut into individual cards)

Steps

1. Read the following books about opposites: Pocket Piggies Opposites! by Richard Austin, Opposites by Cydney Weingart, and Panda Opposites by Suzi Eszterhas. As you read, guide your student to identify the set of opposites on each page.

2. Gather 5-8 objects from around your home.

3. Put the Opposite Sets Cards in a pile face down.

4. Flip over one card and sort the objects according to that attribute. For example, if the card says “Big or Small,” guide your student to place all the big items together and all the small items together.

5. Repeat for all of the cards.

Guiding Questions

• What is the opposite of [big, heavy, loud, hard]?

• Is [the block] [big or small]?

Extensions

• Flip over two cards at a time and sort the objects according to both attributes.