Activities to teach categorisation skills

Categorization skills are an essential part of early childhood language development. Categories are groups or classes of items that share common features. Teaching kids how to sort and classify objects into categories helps them expand their vocabulary, strengthen cognitive development, and improve comprehension and memory.

When you group vocabulary words by category, it helps your child form mental connections and organize language concepts more efficiently.

For instance, a child who understands the category "beach" can relate waves, sand, beach towels, and sandcastles to one central theme. Knowing that an "apple" is a fruit or a "shirt" is a piece of clothing enhances descriptive language and critical thinking skills.

Let’s explore a list of fun and effective categorization activities for kids to build these skills at home or in therapy sessions.

Here is the list of activities to build their categorization skills:

1. Object Sorting Activities

This is one of the most basic and effective sorting activities for preschoolers. Provide a mix of toys, pictures, or flashcards and have your child sort them into two or more categories.

Example: Use two baskets – one for “vehicles” and another for “school supplies.” Ask your child to place toy cars in one and crayons in the other.

👉 Great for: Vocabulary building, visual discrimination, early childhood language skills

Have them sort two like items and move on to more like items.

2. Color Sorting Games

Have them sort items by colour. For example, they have to place the items in the correct colour box.  You can start by sorting with just 2 colours and move up to all 4 different colour boxes. You can play farmers market game with your child. Take your child to the farmers market with this dramatic play and sorting activity. Using realistic looking fruits and vegetables, they can group them by colour, variety, or size.

Bonus Game – Farmers Market Play: Use realistic fruits and vegetables and have them sort by color, type, or size. This is a fun dramatic play activity that supports language development and categorization.

3. Shape Sorting

You can have them sort items by different shapes. For example, put a piece of hard Velcro on the items on each shape board.  Then, put a piece of clear soft Velcro on the back of all the shapes so they can place the shapes on the board and they don’t fall off. categorisation skills

4. Category Sorting Games

Have them sort items by categories. For example, you can play category lotto game with them where you have to place the category labels into a bag or box. Each player gets a lotto card. Then chose a card from the box/bag, name the category and direct them to put a marker on the picture that belongs in the category.

5. Category Sorting Games

Place a selected number of pictures out on a table (random pattern) face up. The players should be seated in such a way that they can all reach the pictures or tiles. Have a stopwatch ready in front of each child. Tell the players they will have 45 seconds to pick up as many of a certain kind of picture when you say “go”. Emphasize that they should wait for you to say “go” – this allows processing time for those who need it and time for players to ask for repetition or clarification.

6. Divergent naming

Divergent naming task where they have to generate multiple items in a particular category. For example, Name three types of transportation. Then, you can play a jeopardy game with your child. First, you have to print up the Jeopardy sheet and write point values on the backside. Place the cards on the table with point values facing up and questions or answers underneath. Then, the child picks a category and gets the next point card available. If the question is answered correctly, the child gets the point.

Supports: Expressive language, verbal fluency, semantic categorization

7. Comparing and contrasting

Comparing and contrasting task allows them to classify words and improve their comprehension, storage and retrieval skills. In this task, you can talk to them about similarities and differences. For example, you can use these category task cards where the students have to name all the items and identify what category or how all the items in the group are similar.

Ideal for building higher-level thinking, comprehension, and descriptive language skills

8. Odd one out

A more challenging task includes identifying which item does not belong in a group of items.  Check out these – “What doesn’t belong?” task cards.

Sharpens logic, categorical understanding, and visual scanning

9. Categorization activities focusing on literacy:

Matching and sorting helps toddlers to identify and recognize individual letters. By using a letters and sounds pocket chart sorting kit, early learners will be on their way to discovering the alphabet with this fun sorting activity. Number order activity will facilitate learning numbers and number order.

Materials needed include a long piece of rope or string, numbers 1-10 written on cardstock or paper, and clothespins. String the rope between two objects. Lay the number cards face down on the floor. Have preschoolers flip them over and sort them into number order (have a reference of the layout for students to use as a guide). Once they feel it is correct, have them attach the number cards to the string with the clothespins.

Best Categorization Apps for Kids

1. Categories From I Can Do apps – You can use this app to get baseline data for how students are currently doing with identifying what doesn’t belong and which items go together.

2. Smarty Ears Go Together app – This app works on categorization through matching.  You can also have them explain why the items go together after matching them up

3. Smarty Ears Categories Learning Centre – This app is great to have because it has different levels to use, so you can differentiate for your child. As your child progress in the categorization levels, you can make things more difficult. It includes tasks such as sorting dissimilar and similar objects, where does it go, category naming, category selection and also provide opportunities for naming additional items within a category

4. Check out the examples of types of categories in developmental order Preschool – Animals, body parts, clothes, shoes, jewelry, colors, letters, shapes, numbers, family members, days of the week, desserts, food, names, rooms of the house, furniture, sounds, toys, categorisation skills

5. Early Elementary – Snacks, drinks, dairy foods, vegetables, pets, book parts, buildings, characters, coins, condiments, containers, dinosaurs, directions, emotions, flowers, fruits, holidays, ingredients, instruments, jobs, jungle animals, liquids, months, movies, patterns, planets, punctuation, reptiles, insects, rhyming words, seasons, senses, kitchen utensils, sizes, solids, sounds, sports, transportation, tools, vowels, writing utensils, school supplies

6. Late Elementary – Mythical creatures, adjectives, verbs, parts of speech, school subjects, businesses, cities, states, consonants, countries, continents, currency, exercises, habitats, mammals, measure units, metals, nouns, oceans, odd/even numbers, presidents, punctuation, seasonings, symbols, textures, trees, weather. categorisation skills

7. When beginning to work on categories, target more concrete concepts then work towards more abstract concepts. Also, keep in mind it’s easier to receptively identify a category compared to expressively naming items in a category.

   
   

Developmental Progression of Category Learning

Here are examples of vocabulary building activities by age group:

✅ Preschool:

• Animals, clothes, colors, shapes, food, toys, numbers, family members

✅ Early Elementary:

• Snacks, vegetables, emotions, holidays, tools, sports, school supplies, transportation

✅ Late Elementary:

• Verbs, adjectives, parts of speech, countries, currencies, oceans, metals, textures, presidents

👉 Start with concrete categories and progress to abstract language concepts. Always remember, receptive categorization (recognizing a group) is easier than expressive categorization (naming group members).

Working on categorization skills enhances a child’s language development, cognitive flexibility, and learning efficiency. Whether you're a parent, teacher, or therapist, these categorization activities for kids can make learning both effective and fun. Pair these games with categorization worksheets, apps, and interactive tools for a comprehensive learning experience. The goal is to make vocabulary building engaging and structured for long-term language success.

Source:

• Allisonfors

• theautismhelper

• speechtx