Olympic Ring Bottle Cap Color Sort

Recycled bottle caps; the Olympic rings and a classic toddler activity rolled into one fun morning of play and learning. Kids love simple activities, and I love using items that I have laying around our home. Making this simple Olympic ring bottle cap color sort activity a sure hit. Whew! Did I really just jam all that in one sentence? It must be all the coffee I am drinking to stay warm;)

I save all our bottle caps (especially the colorful ones), for time just like this. I have an ever growing stash that is taking over a corner in our basement. I have even enlisted a few of my dearest friends to save their bottle caps for me as well.

Anyway, as I dug through my bottle cap stash, I came up with some interesting statistics. Ready for it? In our house (and my enlisted friends homes)…

We drink approximately 10 blue capped beverages to ever 1 red capped beverage.
I also discovered that yellow capped beverages are preferred over black capped beverages.
and finally, I am convinced that no one likes the green capped beverages because I only scrounged up 3 (the rest are apple sauce caps).

If there are any beverage marketers reading out there, make sure you cap your beverage in blue. It is clearly the cap of choice;)

Since this is an Olympic Color Sort event, I could not let the kids sit at the table and sort quietly.

So instead, we pushed the table to the side and geared up for a fun morning of running. The addition of movement to our simple activity, make it twice as exciting for the kids. I honestly haven’t heard this much giggling and excitement over a few colors in a long time.

PS if you are looking for a fun way to count down to the Olympics, check out our Fun Fact Olympic Paper Chain (with free PDF).

Instead of an individual Olympic event; this is a team challenge.

The event was held in our living room, where hidden bottle caps were waiting to be discovered. The kiddos raced around in search of the colorful caps. Once they found one, they ran back and placed it on the matching colored Olympic ring. They were working together to beat the clock. The event was complete once all the caps were found and correctly placed on the corresponding ring before the 2 minute timer beeped. The kids LOVED it!

The kids loved working on color recognition, team work, problem solving skills and so much more. Ok really, the kids really had no idea they were learning all those things, but that’s what makes it a successful activity right? It was a hit because of all the giggles and that they had no idea that they were learning. Love it!