Sorting Jelly Beans

It snowed today, and it was freezing, so going outside was not an option I was willing to consider. Instead we decided to have some fun with our Easter Candy.

I gave Scientist a handful of Jelly Beans (I had to presort them so there were only 4 colors, because I only had four different colors of bowls) and four bowls that matched the color of the Jelly Beans. Then I told him that the game (he's been really into games lately) was to put the green Jelly Beans in the green bowl, the red ones in the red bowl, etc.

He did really well. I've never had him sort anything before except laundry (into whites and darks, and he does ok with that, but not wonderful) so I wasn't sure what would happen.

It was interesting to watch how he chose to sort the beans. If it were me, I probably would have just picked up a bean, decided what color it was, and then decided what bowl it went in, and then moved on to the next bean. Scientist on the other hand, looked through the pile and picked out all the red beans first and put them in the red bowl, then the yellow, then the green, and was left with only orange beans, which he could scoop up quickly and put in the orange bowl. After he'd done it one time, I dumped out all the beans, mixed them up and had him do it again. I tried to get him to pick out a red bean to put in the red bowl, then a green one, and so on, in a pattern. He didn't want anything to do with doing it that way, he wanted to pick out all of one color first and then move on to the next color. I was telling Aaron about this later in the evening, and Aaron said that the way Scientist was doing it was really a more efficient way of sorting, because he only had to sort three colors instead of four, because the last color was already sorted by the time Scientist got to it. So I guess that proves that Scientist has Aaron's brain. Engineers...gotta love 'em I guess.