Feather Color Sorting and Fine Motor Activity

So far this week we’ve shared our toilet roll turkey fine motor activity and our turkey play dough. Today we’re sharing another fine motor activity that will be out for the month of November, but it could easily be incorporated into a bird theme at any time of the year. With these materials the kids will be practicing color recognition and sorting by color.

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To get started, gather play dough in assorted colors, feathers to match each color of play dough, googly eyes, and small foam triangles for the bird beaks.

Because the focus of the activity is the color sorting, I went ahead and made the little turkey bodies for this activity and set everything out like this as an invitation to play.

Tinker knew immediately what to do with the feathers. For younger toddlers you might introduce one color bird and the matching feathers at a time and discuss the colors as the child adds the feathers. Then over a couple of days introduce the other colors, building up to having multiple colors.

And you may be wondering what in the world happened to Tinker. Well, to make a long story short, she and her sister decided it would be fun to be super heroes for the day. Aren’t her super hero mask, arm cuffs, and special nail polish just fabulous? I thought about introducing this activity on a different day, but they were so proud of their creations I figured we needed some good pictures anyway. Here’s to embracing creativity, right?

As kids are poking the feathers into the play dough they are strengthening those little fine motor muscles that are so important for writing later on.

Lovey didn’t want to miss out on the action, so after sissy was done she created some turkeys, too. Hers got to do a little dance performance.

Then they went flying through the air.

Their finished flock is always bright and beautiful.

What ways do you help young kids learn about colors and sorting?