• Putting things into categories is a terrific foundation for later thinking skills.
  • Categorizing everyday objects (such as clothes) is good practice for learning how to organize concepts, ideas, and thoughts.
  • For example, while getting dressed, you can call your child’s attention to the groups that each item belongs to:
    “Here are your blue shirt and your red shirt. These are both shirts.”
    “Here are some shoes. Which shoes today? Black shoes? White shoes?” “I see lots of pants: black pants, brown pants, blue pants.”
    “All of these – pants, shoes, shirts – are CLOTHING.”
  • A super way to extend categorizing skills at this stage is to have treasure hunts!
  • Try searching with your child for all of the toys that you can find together!
  • You can do this for any category you can think of! (Ideas: clothing, things to write with, books, jewelry, dishes, pots and pans, towels, foods, fruits, vegetables, plants, pictures, tools) It’s both fun and educational!
  • Make sure that when you are naming the items with your child, you also talk about the word for the entire category. These “category words” are ones that children with hearing loss often don’t learn unless they are specifically taught.
    • For example, “We found forks, knives, and spoons for dinner. All of these are called utensils” (or “silverware”).

Tip #12: The Bottom Line:
Talk about categories of items that belong together.  Name the items, and name the categories!