Back to school is right around the corner and one thing is on every teacher’s mind: Where do I begin with my students? I love to incorporate color sorting in the first few weeks of school. Why? When teaching students how to work independently, it’s very important to start with skills that they already have a basic understanding of. That’s why today I’m sharing a Color Sorting Activity with you. This activity is a perfect small group or center activity to get your little ones practicing how to work independently while maintaining a basic academic skill.

*Pair this with our Color Centers for more color activities!

Printable Color Sorting Activity

What’s Included:

• 11 Color Header Cards
• 66 Sorting Cards (6 cards for each color)

Colors Included: black, white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, and gray.

How To Use:

Print the header and sorting cards. I recommend printing on card stock and laminating for durability.

Cut out all cards and store in your favorite bag, box, or bin.

Related Resource: Color Words Emergent Readers

When you’re ready for students to use this activity, set the headers and sorting cards out. It’s important to model the activity for students first.

When modeling, I like to make it interactive by simply guiding the activity and having several students show what to do.

Make sure students understand that the headers are the cards that tell what kinds of cards belong in that group. Have them set the header cards out, naming the colors as they go.

Next, they should pick a card one at a time, each time naming the color of the picture on the card.

Students place the card under the header with the same color. Repeat this process until all cards are sorted.

This activity works on getting students to recognize color words too, as the color words are printed on each card, making this not only a color matching activity, but a word matching one too!

Differentiation

If you have students students who are working on identifying their colors, lessen the amount of colors they need to sort.

It’s important to have a baseline so that you know ahead of time which colors your students know and which colors they may still be learning to identify. Once you have this information, you can differentiate this activity to fit their needs.

For students who are still learning their colors, set out the colors they can independently identify with just 1 of the colors they are still learning.

This will allow your students to be focused on learning that one color group without being confused by too many colors they are still learning.

Grab Your Copy

I hope you have a fabulous start to the new school year and that your students enjoy this activity!

Click the yellow button at the bottom of this post to grab your free Color Sorting Activity.

Then, hop over and grab our color words printables!