Any good ideas for a preschool observation experiment?

Question

I'm doing an observation on a preschooler. I was wondering, can you please give me any ideas on what I can do for CLASSIFICATION and GROUPING OBJECTS ACCORDING TO ATTRIBUTES?

(i'm looking for objects to work with that are available in a classroom setting. ie crayons, legos, etc. I was thinking of making the child classify shapes and grouping by colors, but that seems tooooo commonplace)

Thank you much!

Answer 1

Read 3 bears and then have them sort by size or color

Answer 2

no idea

Answer 3

Animals are always a good thing to use for this.  You can have the child group them by animal size, color, movement (walking, swimming, flying), habitat (land, water, trees).  Most classrooms have animal pictures or figures or stuffed animals that you could use or work with.  If not, you can purchase small animal figures at most stores like Target and Walmart for a very reasonable price.  You could also ask the child to group the animals in a way that makes sense to them and see what he/she comes up with.  Then have them explain why they chose the groups they did.  I did this once and could not figure out the reason for the groupings, they had grouped them by beginning letter sound (monkey, mouse;deer, dog;giraffe, jaguar).  Would have never guessed that one!