Sorting items using one attribute as the key to groupings can be quite challenging for young children, but it can also be fun and exhilarating as well.

Take the counters above.  You could ask children to sort the animals by color (an attribute), by size (an attribute), by number of legs (an attribute) or by land or water (also attributes).  Remember, try to avoid asking children to think about more than one attribute at a time (color and size, for instance).

A good set will include lots of animals, sizes, colors, and other qualities.  You may even be able to differentiate between the “grown-up” animals and the “baby” animals.  That would be a great attribute to sort by.

You could also use the Sorting Circles to organize the animals by attributes.  Let us know how you use this manipulative in your program.

You then sorted the attributes into 3 categories; shared attributes, attributes of the first idea/item, and attributes if the second idea/item.

The list might have looked something like this.

You then transferred that information into your Venn Diagram to create a graphic organizer of your ideas.

These sorting circles work in exactly the same way except that young children are sorting attributes that are easy to see and describe.  These allow children to consider one aspect of a concept or item at a time, which is age-appropriate but will be challenging when they attempt to consider the shared attributes.

You can see how children put all of the blue items in one circle and all of the yellow items in the other.  In the shared portion, they have put all of the triangles.  Many will argue that the blue triangles should go with the blue items, and the yellow triangles should go with the yellow items.  This is the challenge.  I wouldn’t expect children under 5 to be able to complete this task completely on their own but experience and opportunity will help support them as they explore the idea of “shared attributes”.