Sesame Street Introduction to Venn Diagram Concept

     So you are bored and have a few hours to kill. What to do, what to do? Practice your organizational and classification skills and make some sweet Venn Diagrams! But say you want to organize more than your A's and B's. Perhaps you need to sort your sticker collection into red stickers and star stickers. Your stickers that are red will go one one side, your stickers that are stars will go on the others. But wait, you have a red star sticker, what side should it go on? The middle section of course because it shares BOTH characteristics. Uh oh, where do you put your green heart sticker? Because it is neither red nor a star, it can't go inside the diagram, so it must go outside. And presto, there you have a pristinely organized sticker collection highlighting both your red stickers and star stickers!

     Here is a game my son really enjoyed a lot. While it doesn't have the overlapping section of a true Venn Diagram, I think it's a good introduction to the concept. Sesame Street character Zoe asks children to sort animals based on color, size, and tail and ear length.
     The game encourages children to focus on one specific characteristic at a time while ignoring others. It's a simple game, but a great start to sorting and organizing in a fun, entertaining way which really engages children to continue to further levels.
GAME! -----> Zoe's Pet Shelter, Introducing Venn Diagrams

Photo attributions: Weisstein, Eric W. "Venn Diagram." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/VennDiagram.html
Image Source Page: http://www.kindergartenkindergarten.com/math-problem-solving/