What's It For? — The Job Baskets

A round-the-house collecting game where everyday things — money, food, tools, clothes — are sorted by the job they do, not by how they look.

  1. Set out 3–4 baskets or bags and give each a job with a quick drawing on a label: things for eating, things for fixing and making, things for buying, things for keeping clean.
  2. Send your child around the house to collect 2–3 safe items for each basket — a spoon and an apple; a tape measure and a paintbrush; a few coins and a shopping bag; a toothbrush and a flannel.
  3. Back at base, your child shows each item and says what it is and what it is for.
  4. Add a few items you have chosen yourself, including puzzlers — a sponge (cleaning or painting?), a bank card, a whisk, a key.
  5. Talk about each puzzler: “What do people do with this? Have you seen someone use it?”
  6. Put everything back where it lives, naming the room as you go.

Variation: play Wrong Tool! — pretend to use something for the wrong job (eat soup with a comb, pay with a sock) and let your child correct you and fetch the right thing.

Requirements

  • Space: Several rooms of the home, plus a spot to gather
  • Surface: Floor or table for laying out the baskets
  • Materials: 3–4 baskets, bags, or boxes; paper labels; ordinary household items including a few coins
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child; siblings can each take a basket
  • Supervision: Moderate — check what is being collected, especially from the kitchen, bathroom, and toolbox

Rationale & Objective

Knowing “about things used every day, like money and food” is a classic 5-year cognitive milestone from the CDC checklists. Sorting by function goes a step beyond colour and shape — a wooden spoon and a banana look nothing alike but belong together because of what we do with them. Kemler Nelson and colleagues showed that even very young children treat what an object is for as central to what kind of thing it is, and preschoolers build on this to form the broad everyday categories — tools, food, money, clothes — that organise their knowledge of the world. Montessori’s practical-life area and HighScope’s classifying indicator both use real household objects for this reason — concepts stick best when they are tied to things the child has seen people actually use.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: names familiar objects but describes use vaguely (“you hold it”); sorts by where things were found rather than what they do
  • Developing: says what common items are for and places them correctly; puzzled by less familiar tools; knows coins are money but not what money does
  • Proficient: sorts a dozen or more items by job, explains each, and knows that money is swapped for things in shops
  • Advanced: argues that a puzzler fits two baskets; suggests new job baskets (things for cooking, things for measuring); explains what would go wrong with the wrong tool

Safety Notes

  • Set the rule before the hunt — nothing sharp, nothing from the medicine cabinet, nothing from under the sink, and no real tools without a grown-up
  • Offer safe stand-ins for the tool basket — tape measure, paintbrush, clothes peg, toy hammer — rather than screwdrivers or blades
  • Coins are a choking hazard for younger children and should be washed off hands afterward
  • Remind children that cleaning products are for adults only, even though they belong in the “keeping clean” idea
  • Treat bank cards and phones as “look, do not keep” items and return them straight away

Hints

  • Playfulness: be a baffled alien or robot who has never seen Earth things — “What is this strange stick with bristles? Do you eat it?”
  • Sustain interest: change the jobs — things for keeping warm, for cooking, for the garden, for sleeping, for getting somewhere
  • Common mistake: doing the explaining yourself. Ask “what do people do with it?” and wait; half-right answers are a chance to show the object in use
  • Limited space: stay in one room, or cut pictures from a supermarket flyer or catalogue and sort those into envelopes
  • Cross-domain: sort a handful of coins by size and colour (numeracy); help with a real job using the right tool — whisking, sweeping, measuring (practical life, fine motor)
  • Progression: 2 very different jobs → 4 jobs → puzzlers with two uses → child invents the job baskets → Wrong Tool! with explanations

Sources

  • CDC “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” 5-year milestone checklist (pre-2022 edition) — “knows about things used every day, like money and food”
  • Kemler Nelson, D.G., Russell, R., Duke, N. & Jones, K. (2000), “Two-year-olds will name artifacts by their functions,” Child Development, 71, 1271–1288
  • Markman, E.M. (1989), Categorization and Naming in Children: Problems of Induction, MIT Press
  • HighScope Preschool Curriculum — Key Developmental Indicator 46, Classifying
  • Montessori practical life curriculum — real household tools used for real purposes
  • Teaching Strategies GOLD — Objective 13, Uses classification skills