Sorting objects 1

Hello there mathematicians.

We were tidying up at home and look at this box of things; it's quite a mess.

I was wondering how could we sort it out? What are the different things that you can see in there?

Ah, I can hear you. Some of you were saying I can see some pencils. I can put the pencils over here. What else can you see? Oh, you can see some cars. Some of them are really fun cars, so I have some cars that I can put over here.

What else can you see in my box? Oh, you can see some animals. Yeah, I can see some animals too; some cows, two sheep, one cow, a pig and some little baby piglets. So we could see some animals.

And what else can you see in my box here? Oh! Some counters, yeah, I'm going to tip those out. Here I have all of these different counters.

And if I have a look at them, look over here, I have three cars 1, 2, 3. I have some pencils. Will you count them with me? Excellent. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 pencils. How many animals can you see? And over here we have some counters. Can you see how many there are? Should we count them together? Let's try. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, counters.

I wonder now if I just take my pencils, move away my counters and move away my animals,and, move away my cars. Now I just have my pencils. I'm gonna think about sorting them, so I might put these ones together. And these ones together. And this one over here by itself.

Can you think about why they've been grouped together like that? Yeah, that's what I was thinking too, so I had the things the pencils that are the same colour and when we get things and we sort them out together, we call them a set. But over here, I have a set of really cool rocks that we found the other day when we went out for a walk.

Some of them are really big, some of them small little pebbles, and some of them are dark grey, and this one's Iike a caramel colour, and some of them are white. But here I have a set of rocks. And what about here? I found these when we were washing up; a set of spoons! Yeah! or things that you could eat delicious ice cream with. And I also have a set of... toys!

I know, they look a bit fun don't they? Some dinosaurs and ponies and things that move and blocks to build, and you know it's always good to have dinosaurs to play with. And so when we make a set, we always make sure that they have something in common. And that's how we know that we're sorting a set, so let me show you some others and I'd like you to think about what do these things have in common? Because these are all things that we can play with.

So what about these things? What do they all have in common? That's right! They're all dice aren't they? What about these things? What do these things all have in common? They're numbers. Shall we read them together? What's this one? five, eight, seven, four, nine and zero.

What about these things? What does this set have in common? Ooo, I can hear your brains thinking. That's right, there's some pencils and pens, some coloured pencils and lead pencils, a really fun bee pen. Yeah, they're things that you could write with, so that's what they have in common.

And what about this one? What does this collection or set have in common? What can you see there that's the same? That's right, they are all representations of 10. Look. Here's the word ten. Here's the number 10. This is 10 on a ten- frame, 10 paddle pop sticks and 10 blocks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

So what I wonder now, little mathematicians, is if I come back to my box of things that I had at the beginning, that was that clunky sound when you heard me put my counters back in my box. Now what I wonder is, I wonder how many different ways we could sort this? Or you could go find your own bits and pieces at home and think about what are all the different ways that you could sort your things into sets and how would you describe them?

Over to you!