Opening and Closing and Sorting, OH MY!

Every month, I head to my local Dollar Tree to see what kind of goodies I can find for my classroom before I venture into more expensive territory.  In general, I go in with a few ideas/themes and leave with stuff I actually didn't intend to buy.

This month, I was standing in line when I saw a little medicine sorter.  Each section was a different color and all of them stacked up nice and neat into a fun rainbow-colored tower.  I had no idea what I was going to do with this handy device, but I grabbed it anyway and by the time I got home, I had a plan.

As soon as I saw this tray sitting out needing a new activity, I knew it would work perfectly for sorting.  I broke out my trusty label-maker and assigned each section a size: small, medium, large, using appropriately-sized text for pre-readers.  

Inside each section of the medicine sorter, I placed three matching buttons, one in each size.  When all of the sections are open, it looks like this:

And those buttons are just begging to be sorted!

Of course, once everything has been sorted according to size, all of the buttons must go back to their compartments according to color and then little hands have to twist the sections back together to create the rainbow tower again.  How many more skills could I have crammed into this activity?

Thanks for the inspiration, Dollar Tree!