More than just a homemade matching game

This evolved into so much more than I originally planned. At first it was just a matching game with the picture of the animals and their names for my youngest (14 months) to learn her animals.

Then I realized I could be using these for my 3 yr old and 5 yr old who I'm introducing to reading and writing.

So I wrote the animal names on another sheet of paper, put them on popsicle sticks.

The blue base is an empty wrapped diaper box with slots for the popsicle sticks.

Becoming familiar with the words and pictures and how to match/read them.

For some writing/reading practice, 5 yr old wrote the word, and 3 yr old found the animal.

"You wrote dog."

"I know you're writing piiiiiiig!"

Then 3 yr old picked an animal to draw. I gave him verbal direction on how to draw the animal (i.e. a circle for the head, a small circle in the middle, two lines inside the small circle, two circle eyes and triangle ears.) He also was encouraged to write the letter P.

A quick matching game while waiting for 5 yr old to draw her animal.

Matching the words to the picture with word.

Guess what she drew:) 

Charades! I laid the pictures on sticks out....

The words on a sticks were turned upside down to pick from. Once they picked a word, they were encouraged to sound it out. If they were unable to sound out the word, they could look at the picture.

Then they set their word aside and acted out the animal. 

"I know what you are!"

The person guessing the animal would get so excited, run and grab the picture of the animal and show the person acting!

:)