Land, Water or Air Vehicle Sorting

Three tall lanes fill the middle of the page: a road marked LAND, waves marked WATER and a sky with clouds marked AIR. Four vehicles sit above the lanes and four below, each with its name and a dot: ship, airplane, car, hot-air balloon, helicopter, bicycle, bus and sailboat. Your child draws a line from each dot to the lane where that vehicle travels.

Sorting things into groups is one of the early thinking skills children practice, and vehicles make it concrete. To choose a lane, a child has to recall something real about each vehicle, like wheels on a road or a boat floating, and use it to decide. Many of the vehicles do not sit over their own lane, so some lines have to cross the page, which takes some planning and pencil control.

Before starting, point to each lane and say its word together. If your child gets stuck on a vehicle, ask a question instead of giving the answer: does it have wheels, does it float, does it fly?