More early thinking and reasoning skills

Speech and language therapy

﻿Hello everybody, my name's Emma, and welcome to today's lesson. I'm looking forward to today's session, and I hope you are too. I can't wait to get started, but before we do, just a quick reminder, we here at Oak are here to support any approaches you might already be using and any work you might have already been set. We know this lesson is going out to so many different children and families, so if you're not sure or have any questions, please do contact your child's school or usual speech and language therapy team. In today's session, we're carrying on doing some early thinking and reasoning tasks. I'm going to be sharing an idea for an activity that you could do at home with objects and picture matching, and then I've got some more suggestions for some other activities that you could carry out. So for today's session, you'll need some stacking bricks or building blocks if you have them at home. You'll also need a camera or printer, or some drawing equipment, if that's easier. You'll need some containers or bowls and any other everyday objects or toys that you have around the house, they would probably be really helpful in today's activities. So before we begin, turn off any distractions or notifications that you might have on on your device. Find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed for the lesson and make sure that you and your adult are seated comfortably. When you're ready, let's begin. Okay, let's start by doing some talking about more early reasoning and thinking skills. As we know, early information processing begins when children are able to find and collect relevant information and then sort that information out. Previously, we've worked on colour and object sorting. Today, we're going to continue with a little bit more simple matching and sorting. Simple matching and sorting tasks support children in their development of their early reasoning skills because they present them with visual information that they need to be able to process in order to complete the task. We're going to be making your very own object to picture match tasks today. First, you'll need some stacking or building blocks. You'll need to take some pictures or draw some pictures of these blocks. Place all of the blocks in one container, and then the pictures of them in separate containers. Then, sort and match the bricks into the containers with the pictures that match to them. It should look a bit like this. Here, you can see I've got a container with all my building blocks on the left. On the right hand side, I have four separate pots that has a picture of each of the building blocks in it. In order to complete this task, I'll need to take the blocks from the left hand side and sort them into the pots that match the colour on the right. So pause the video here to complete your object to picture sort activity. When you've had a couple of goes, come back to the video and press play to continue. You can use this basic set up for lots of different object to picture sort activities, as long as your objects are on the left and then your pictures are on the right. The opportunities are endless. You could have a go with pictures of animals, clothing, you could also have a go sorting supplies. You could make bags for each room in the house, for example the kitchen or the bathroom, and place pictures of items that you would need in each room. Then you could have a go sorting them into the relevant containers. From the activity suggestions on the previous slide, pause the video and pick one to have a go at home. When you're ready, come back to the video and press play to continue. Once you've gotten used to sorting objects to pictures, the next step is to move to matching pictures to other pictures. You collect pictures of objects and make two copies, one for the container and one from the sorting pile. The categories that you could think about creating this task for are animals, clothes, food, vehicles, and anything else. The important thing is that whatever you're doing, you're having fun with your matching tasks. Work in matching pictures and objects together into as many of your day to day activities as you can. Well, that brings us to the end of today's lesson, but a really big well done on all your hard work. Don't forget to share some of the work that you've been doing at home with your adults at school so that they can see all the fantastic progress that you're making. You could also ask your adult to share some of the work that you've been doing on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter by tagging @oaknational so that I can see the wonderful progress that you're making as well. All that's left for me to say is thank you, but take care and enjoy the rest of your learning today, buh-bye.

More early thinking and reasoning skills

More early thinking and reasoning skills

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

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