Children love to collect all kinds of things, from sticks to colorful leaves to trading cards. These objects are special to children because they found the objects and chose them for a quality determined by them. For preschool students, the quality could be shape, a certain feel in the hand, color, or even just being close at hand. Exploring the qualities of a collections can be an engaging experience that builds on prior learning while introducing or practicing such skills as asking questions, comparing, sorting, counting, describing, developing understanding of the objects, and communicating about the investigations, all part of doing scientific inquiry as defined by the National Science Education Standards for grades K-4.