What's the BIG Idea | Activity kit 1 | Recognizing Same and Different

MATH & SCIENCE LITERACY CONNECTIONS

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This kit is part of the What's The BIG Idea? series and contains:

- the Mother Goose Programs Sorting Collection with sorting loops

- instructional manual

- Five Creatures by Emily Jenkins

What do young children learn when they explore same and different?

They learn to sort a collection of different objects with shared attributes (characteristics).
They observe and talk about physical characteristics of objects.
They talk about uses and/or functions of different objects.

The goals of this What’s the BIG Idea? kit:

To observe, describe and compare sizes, shapes, quantities, colors and functions. To notice similarities and differences and put objects into groups based on shared attributes.
To recognize and establish attributes (criteria) for selecting objects to be classified on the basis of sameness and difference and discover the many ways objects can be described and sorted according to:
- physical characteristics and structure
- use and/or function

$32.99

Download a PDF of a free sample activity

Whenever we say “same” and “different” we’re making comparisons. To do this, we must have a basis for comparison—it can be a single attribute or multiple criteria. Therefore, it’s possible that two objects may be the same in one way and different in another. Two buttons may be the same because they’re round, but different—one has two holes and one has four. Whether they are the same or different depends on the attribute we’ve chosen.

This sounds simple but it’s fundamental to science and mathematics learning for young children. Making comparisons in an experiment is often just recognizing the patterns and relationships in objects and assigning the attributes we wish to judge them by. Observing things and naming their attributes is the first step in this process. In a world filled with variety, we all—even young children—want to impose order and organization.

Children learn how things are the same and different when we show them how to observe and name characteristics in a sorting investigation where we sort different objects. This is an opportunity to explore a variety of ways in which items can be organized (sorted) according to different sets of attributes. At the same time, children discover how objects may share characteristics and still differ in other ways. This introduces the mathematical concept of sets.

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0514746. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.