White Board Shape Matching Activity

This one is one of those no-brainer, impromptu, zero-effort kind of an activity that I set up for the little guy late one evening. We were just done scribbling and drawing on our white board and were wondering what to do next when my eyes fell upon the shape sorting toy that was sitting in the toy shelf. 

Randomly drew four of each shape - circle, square, rectangle and triangle - on the white board. Then, I just asked the little man to pick the shape blocks from the sorting toy, one by one, and place the m on the whit board, on their matching shapes that I drew. 

That was that and he was one happy little monkey, as he did this fun easy matching activity! :)

Shape Sorting Fishing Game| Toddler Games

When the Mini was littler, I had bought this set of lacing buttons and rope toy for him. He showed absolutely no interest and so they just sat at the back of his toy shelf for a long long time. Recently, an idea struck me and I decided to re-purpose the shape discs from the lacing set for a fun little game that I was sure will be a hit with him.... and it was!! :)

He loves his shapes and colours and a complete water baby who loves water play! So putting these together, I set up this Shape Sorting Fishing game for him. All I used for this game, was a big plastic container filled with water, the coloured shape discs from the lacing set and a strainer from his beach set! It took me all of 2 minutes to set this up and kept him busy for a long time, as he wanted to do it over and over again! And I was just happy that I could re-purpose an ignored old toy!! :)

Maze Shape Sorting Game

This was one fun activity we did a few months ago. It needs just 5 minutes of prep work and you are all set to have loads of fun for a good amount of time. It aids them to concentrate and multi-task and they need to walk on the ramp and also sort the items based on the shape. It tingles their little brains a bit and also give those tiny legs a little work out ion the process! :D

My boy is very fond of shapes and loves identifying shapes in everyday items. He has a few shape based puzzle and toys. This little game actually uses the pieces of a simple wooden shape sorter toy that he has in which there are little wooden pieces of 4 different shapes and colours that need to be sorted and inserted based on shape, onto a stand that has tiny sticks to hold the shapes in place. If you do not already have a shape sorter toy, you can use anything else that you have at hand or you could just cut out pieces of chart paper into different shapes and colours.

This game was an absolute hit with my Mini. He wanted to do it a few times over! Hope your little one enjoys it too :)

DIY Jigsaw Puzzle from an Existing Jigsaw Puzzle

 

If your Mini is as crazy as mine is about jigsaw puzzles, then this one is for you! 

I noticed my little one's fondness for puzzles right from a very early age. I introduced him to knob and chunky puzzles at around 16 months and he immediately took to them. He would ask for them everyday and keep himself busy solving them. And then slowly we moved onto 2-3 pieces jigsaw puzzles at around 22 months. By the age of 25 months he was loving solving 9-12 pieces puzzles. 

Apart from these little jigsaw puzzles, we also have a couple of floor puzzles which are 24-36 pieces and the Mini and I do them together every now and then. Very recently, at the age of 33 months, he has begun doing these bigger puzzles all by himself. It is such a joy to watch him get so engrossed in finding and fixing the pieces of the puzzle together and the delight in his eyes when he completes the puzzles! :)

We have a good collection of jigsaw puzzles to suit my little boy's interests. Vehicles being his primary interest, most of our puzzles are based around them. He loves doing them over and over again and is not yet bored of any of them! I however felt, a little bit of variety would help and so wanted to try adding in more range to our current set of puzzles.

I came across this idea of drawing a picture on plain puzzle pieces and actually making your own personalised jigsaw puzzles! I wanted to try that too only, I did not know where to find plain jigsaw pieces. One day, it just occurred to me that most of the puzzles that we have, are plain at the bottom! I could just flip over the puzzle and use the bottom side to create my own jigsaw puzzle there.... and so that what I did! :D 

I used the backside of two of our little 12 pieces wooden jigsaw puzzles to make new puzzles. I drew some basic shapes with different coloured markers on one and wrote numbers from 1-12 on the other. The little guy is happy with these new additions to his puzzles collection :)

 

Sticky Notes Memory Game (Shapes)

A few weeks ago, we discovered that all we needed was our white board, some sticky notes and some markers to keep us entertained for a good deal of time! :) I have been coming up with quite a few variations of early learning activities with just these three items and this is one of them.

Most of our activities these days revolve around ABC, colours and shapes. Because the Mini is obsessed with these :) So for this particular activity, I chose to base it around some basic shapes. The concept is the same just like any other memory game - remembering, finding and pairing the similar items.

This was the first time I was playing a memory game with him, so was not sure if he would grasp the concept. But to my delight he did, and enjoyed it thoroughly too! :)

You can do this activity based around what interests your child. Numbers, Letters, Names etc. We based it around shapes for this one and eventually tried other variations too. Its a lovely little game to help little ones improve their memory power. Happy playing! :)