Pencil War

Oh, its a Pencil War in the classroom at times!

Do your young students worry about how many pencils they have in their tub? Do they worry about how many they have of each color? Do they try to get the tub or tin, with the most red or pink pencils? Do they get all lost and confused when you ask them to "sort out their colors"?

Print and laminate a set of these sorting mats - one for each child in your class.

Ask your students at the beginning of each week to sort and match their pencils on the mat.

Ask them to place each pencil on top of the corresponding picture. Walk around the classroom and take a look at the mats. Distribute spare pencils to fill any gaps on the mats. 


Any leftover pencils (in tubs that won't fit on a mat) can go in a tub on your shelf called "spare pencils".

Each student should then have one pencil of each color in their pencil tub, and they have practised 1:1 correspondence while helping you to keep track of resources in the classroom.

If you have two students sharing one tin of pencils, ask them to combine their two sets once they have sorted their own mat of pencils out - this way there will be two of each color in their tin.

Click here to download from TpT for free!