is it red? is it yellow? is it blue?

by Tana Hoban is a great book to use when talking about sorting with young children. I started the school year off with a mathematical unit on sorting and this week I'm highlighting my top five favorite books I used. Tana Hoban is a master in creating photo- concept books. She has been a personal favorite of mine since the girls were infants. This book encourages children to look at the world around and notice the colors they see. Each page is a photograph of real objects you could see in your life and underneath circles identify the colors within the photograph. My favorite pages are the ones with many objects the same in a variety of colors. This lends a discussion about what the sorting category is beyond a color rule. Identifying relationships between objects using color, size, and shape is key in understanding and using sorting in their lives.