Sorting Nuts

Today the children were fascinated with all the acorns, pecans and others nuts that were dropping from the trees. They were collecting them like a bunch of squirrels for winter. So we thought why leave the nuts outside lets bring them in and turn these nuts into a wonderful math lesson, we also add other mix nuts to give them enough of a variety. We set out sorting trays (old cafeteria plates found at a yard sale) and let the children sort the different varieties. They discovered that some groups had more or less. Some were large and some were small nuts. We wrote down all of their observations and then placed the nuts in the math area to see what they could discover on their own.