• The helpful doves

First of all we remind the children (3–6 years) of the fairy tale of Cinderella (the version with the helpful doves). Then we tell them we’ll be pretending to be the doves who helped Cinderella, so that she could go meet the prince at the ball. First we have to fly there – the children stand in one place and wave their arms like wings – then we encourage the children to make the sounds a dove makes (coo, coo!). Finally each child in turn “takes flight” – by running, waving their arms and calling out “coo, coo!” – to the place we decide (Helpful dove Jeníček can fly to the door to the changing room.). Then we place bowls with a mix of small objects (beads, lentils, peas, stones) on the children’s tables, with the number of different types depending on the number of children sitting at one table. Then we prepare small containers (bowls) for the placement of the sorted material. We invite our helpful doves to fly down to the tables and sort out everything from the large bowl into the smaller bowls. The children sit down at the tables and we ask them to name the various things in the center bowl. We can suggest two sorting approaches – either all of them collect a single type of material at once (e.g. lentils) and then pour it into one of the smaller bowls or they can divide the task up with each of them collecting a single material type. The children can choose which one themselves. We watch the children discussing this and if necessary (a conflict occurs) we can help the children with their decision. The children can (but don’t have to) compete to see which table sorts everything the quickest.

An artistic activity might follow, with children using watercolors to paint the dove and the bowl and after it’s dry they glue the materials they sorted onto the bowl. Another variation is creating a mosaic out of the sorted material.