Homeschool button jar

 I have a bunch of buttons, and the girls adore them. So, when the book "Playful Learning" suggested the book "The Button Box," I knew it would be a hit. We checked it out from the library, read it and then let the girls have freeplay with the buttons ...

We also enjoyed a bit of organization - there are so many ways to do this!
We talked about all the sorting possibilities - by size, by color, if there are swirls, by how many holes the buttons have, what material the button is made of, if the buttons are shiny or dull, etc.

Lil Sis began by sorting according to how many holes the button had. She picked three categories: zero holes, two holes and four holes. She guessed that there would be the most of the two-holed buttons (she was right). She kept a tally sheet until she lost interest, and then we worked on some come color sorting:

Big Sis wanted to sort by color, and she selected four colors she'd keep track of:
pink, blue, black and white.
She guessed that the black button group would be largest (she was correct).

Here's what her tally sheet looked like at the end. She would have kept counting, but the jar she collected her counted buttons in tipped over into the pile of unsorted buttons. I'm sure she was frustrated, but we just cleaned up and moved on. What a sweetie.

And our little guy got strapped in again ... with a few objects to experiment with, and a button too big for his mouth.