Teaching Categories

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	I'm working on category charts for my son.  I've laminated a bunch of poster board and a ton of pictures.  I've come up with the following categories and the pictures I've printed for each.  Can you think of anymore that I should add - either categories and/or pictures?  My plan is to give my son a choice of three pictures.  For example, we'll be using the chart for "Things we eat with" and I'll place a picture of a fork, an ambulance, and a pencil and ask him to give me/show me the correct picture.  We'll then stick it to the board with the velcro until it's complete.  Thanks for any help/opinions you can provide!    Things we eat/drink with - fork, knife, spoon, plate, bowl, cup   Things we wear - shoes, socks, pants, shorts, shirt, sweater, jacket, hat, mittens, pajamas, boots   Things we write with - pen, pencil, marker, crayons, paint   Types of weather - sunny, rainy, snow, windy, hot, cold, cloudy   Things we use when we go night-night - pillow, blanket, bed   Things that fly - birds, butterfly, lady bug, kite, airplane, helicopter, rocket, hot air balloon   Things that drive - car, truck, van, fire truck, ambulance, motorcycle, tractor   Also thinking about - types of toys, types of furniture, animals that live on a farm, types of household items     pets, sweet foods, salty foods, sour foods, things doctors use, teachers use, cooks use,  princess items, pirate items, hero items, fireman...policeman, toiletries, things that are red, blue, green ect..things that are sad, happy, sick, scared ect..weather/seasons items for summer, winter ect...sounds of animals~ sounds of transportation-car, plane, ship ect.. types of things for holidays: christmas, easter, birthdays ect.. probably many more but I got to go get my oldest from school:)We usually start teaching caterogies by sorting. We start with actual objects (usually pretend/toys) and work on basic categories that are very different (fruits and cars, or something like that.) It's easiest to just work on two at a time until they're able to sort those, and then begin to add one new category at a time. If you give a concrete place for them to put the items when sorting (we usually use a paper plate), that helps a lot too. Moving from very different categories to similar will help, as once they are able to consistently identify which category an item belongs to will help once categories actually becomes subcategories within a larger category (fruits and vegetables, etc.) If your son is already able to categorize via sorting then I think your idea of working on them in that manner is a great next step. You could eventually take it even further by doing more of a 'fill in the blank' program "A carrot is a ____. A pen is a ____. A potato is a ____." Good Luck! Jessica How about shapes and colors (ie things that are round, things that are green, maybe using items he has a special interest in) ? We never did a board, but we did a similar activity in the bathtub.  I set out 4 bath toys (for example 3 cups and a fish) and sang the Sesame Street song "one of these things is not like the others".  Before the song was done, they had to identify the item that didn't belong. Good luck with everything.   I ran across this today and thought of you.  Conversation boards, schedule cards and activity cards that might inspire you to new categories.  If nothing else, you can print out the sheets just for the clip art.  Here's the link: http://www.tinsnips.org/Pages/makeandtake.html
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