Relaxed, enjoyable activities alongside the family matter: they take our minds off our problems and help us cope with what we have to face.
We wanted to share with parents some of our educational and creative activities, the ones that keep children busy and help them learn new things.
The activity itself was simple. The child cut out the foods from the last sheets and then placed each one in the right basket.
Sorting into categories looks trivial, but it is one of the first serious logical operations a child performs. To put a food into a basket you have to work out the criterion by which things are grouped, apply it the same way every time, and be able to say why you chose as you did. And when a food turns up that could go into two baskets at once, the conversation gets better still, because it forces the child to argue for their choice instead of guessing it.
On top of that comes the work of the hand: cutting along an outline, which calls for patience and precision, and laying out the sheets, which calls for order.
It is the kind of activity that takes twenty minutes at the kitchen table and still leaves something behind.