how can I explain putting things in order

[sanserif]

We have the 'Sid the Science Kid' app on my iphone and DS likes to play the put things in order games (e.g., photos of a flower growing from nothing to fully blossoming). The thing is, he just doesn't seem to quite get it. He gets the start and end bits but just seems to get confused about the middle bits and I've tried explaining/helping but most of the time it doesn't really seem to sink in. Doesn't help that the app itself is a bit rubbish but I think, regardless of the app's quality, the incomprehension still exists.

Any ideas of different words to use or approaches to take to get this concept sinking in? He's generally quite good at grasping things fairly quickly so am not sure why this one is difficult for him. Maybe he just doesn't have the attention span but it's driving me a bit nuts trying to explain it again and again and I've run out of ways to explain it.

You could try doing it with real life objects. Just go from smallest to biggest with the same type of object - like different sized squares if paper, stacking cups etc. Then you can compare each object to the previous one to decide which would come next. Maybe just start with 5 objects - he might do the smallest & largest 1st then order the rest.

Then you could move onto pictures on cards of a sequence like the flower growing and discuss each stage.

Hope this helps.

Tell him it's like a story? That you need to work out what comes next?
Do a really simple one for him to give him the jist of hoe they go, maybe that relates to him? Ie pic of him eating breakfast, pic of him playing, then one of bath time snd then pic of him in bed?ask him what happens first, then what happens next etc
That's what I'd do!