FM.H.104 PLACES 5 BLOCKS IN SERIAL ORDER

In this activity, the problem is to place 5 blocks or cylinders of different sizes in order of size.

How to Assess

Materials: 5 blocks or cylinders of notably different size.

Method: Place the blocks in random order. Ask your child to make them go bigger and bigger. Demonstrate if necessary, but without describing what you are doing, and then return the blocks to a random order.

Score plus if your child places the blocks in order of size without help.

How to Teach

It’s handy to have a little doll nearby, who wants to go ‘up the steps’. At the end of your child’s try, see if the doll can go ‘up, up, up’.

If an error is made, give your child the opportunity to sort it out by himself, before you step in to help him.

Use consistent verbal directions right from the beginning. You can teach your child to work from the littlest to the biggest or vice versa, but in the early stages, use the same approach each time. You want your child to learn a strategy for solving this problem.

Playtime and Round-the-house Activities

Make a ‘family’ out of cardboard cylinders. Cut lengths of cylinder to represent each member of your family, exaggerating differences of size, if necessary. If you have a small family you could include the pet or some friends. Draw a face on each cylinder and identifiable features. Ask your child ‘Who’s the biggest person in our family?’ (or ‘Who’s the smallest?’) and help him to line up the figures in order of size.

You can also play this game with dolls or Teddy Bears. Or you could use books of different sizes or empty shampoo bottles or lengths of garden hose or pieces of bread stick.

There are many commercially available toys which involve grading objects by size – some of these were described under FM.H.65 (puts together 4 nesting cups).

Remembering and Extending

Once your child has learned to arrange 5 objects in serial order, he can learn to arrange 6 or 7 or . . .