Five Senses: Sort by Sense

Ten pictures sit in two rows at the top of this 1st grade page, each with a coral dot beneath it, and five tall bins stand along the bottom. Every bin carries a verb on a tab — taste, smell, see, hear, touch — and the organ that does it underneath. The child draws a line from each picture down to the bin it belongs in. Exactly two go to each bin: on the sheet shown a lemon and a sweet, jasmine and garlic, binoculars and a star, a violin and a drum, a pillow and sand.

Two per bin is what turns matching into sorting. A child cannot finish by pairing off, because the bins fill up and the last few pictures have to be placed by argument rather than elimination. Naming the sense with a verb rather than a noun is deliberate at this level: a child says what they would do with the thing, and the organ printed under the verb is there as a reminder rather than as the answer.

One sheet, ten pictures, five bins. The band between the pictures and the bins is left clear on purpose, because ten lines crossing in a small space become impossible to follow; give a child a ruler if their lines wander. This is the first sorting face of the senses family, and it is the right one to use before the odd-one-out sheet, where the categories are no longer printed.