Sets and Subsets

Classifying and sorting is a skill that we begin teaching at a young age. Our children help us sort the utensils from the dishwasher.  They sort their clothes into pants, shirts and pajamas.  My child even likes to sort his Halloween candy when he returns from trick-or-treating.  In third grade, we have added some new fancy SOL words to sorting and classifying.  They are simply sets and subsets.  We took animals and shapes with different attributes and began making sets. We sorted animals into two sets, invertebrates and vertebrates.  We then took a set (isolating the set) and put that set into two subsets, mammals and reptiles.  We discussed how we could then make subsets of our subsets and the fun began.  Here are some pictures of a Promethean lesson on sorting shapes into sets and subsets and the labeling each set.