Once someone can differentiate between objects, the next logical step is to differentiate in more detail. Yes, thing A is different from thing B, but how? The most intuitive way to practice this, especially for someone who can’t read/write yet, is to compare objects on some metric. (And later group or sort them, in the next teaching resource.)
This is such a core skill, connected to and needed for almost everything, that we decided to pack a lot into this one resource. It approaches the skill from many different angles. It starts off very easy but moves to more and more advanced applications with every exercise/puzzle/game.
We also explicitly teach terms related to sequencing, like “first” and “last”. Being able to “sequence” in this general way is a necessary step towards understanding the idea of counting later. (It’s a nice bonus when it comes to sorting too, but not truly necessary there.)
As usual, after trying this product we recommend moving to puzzles that test and explore the skill in a much better way. For example, our unique Fantasy Forest Paths.
This part of the curriculum used to be a single resource called Comparing & Grouping. These two are highly connected, which is why we put them in a single product at first.
When you compare two things, and determine they’re the same … well, they belong to the same group. If you compare two things and determine they’re not the same … they are in a different group. This skill directly leads to the ability to spot patterns and group things according to that.
In the end, however, we had too many interesting things to say and teach about this. This single product/category became far too big, and we split it again into My First Comparisons followed by My First Groups.
Continue Exploring
Exhausted this resource? Below is a list of all resources (in this and other factions) around this same topic.
Product Contents
Below is a summary of this product's contents. The actual product might have even more inside, but never less.
- Explainer of Comparing and the words/symbols associated.
- Compare Symbols (easy warm-up)
- Compare Symbols Size (draw “<” “>” or “=” between two images)
- Compary Symbols Quantity
- Loosey-Goosey Lines Size (connect the dots by comparing)
- Loosey-Goosey Lines Color
- Loosey-Goosey Lines Quantity
- Loosey-Goosey Lines Rotation
- Spot The Differences
- Shape Sorting (cut out shapes, sort by properties such as size or number of edges)
- Animal Sorting (cut out animals, sort based on weight as illustrated by given examples)
- Animal Sorting Advanced
- Circle Tower (stack small circles on bigger circles)
- Wizard Sorting (cut out funny beings, sort by properties such as length, width or number of eyes)
- Before & After (Timeline Task; place story events such that they make logical sense)
- Comparing Activities
- Comparing Activity/Game with board