3-in-1 Preschool Activity

When we started officially home educating our oldest (I believe we all educate our children from the day they're born, but that's another blog post), we quickly discovered that her enthusiasm for learning was infectious and her little brothers just wanted to do exactly what she was doing.

So we developed a lot of simple activities that could only be done while Miss Kindergarten was doing her school work. Things like cutting (of all the activities, cutting is definitely their favourite), colouring, pasting, cutting, drawing, cooking, playdough, cutting, stamping... and did I mention cutting? They'd cut paper up in to tiny pieces and paste it to a sheet, then stick it on the fridge, very proud of their dinosaur or giraffe. 

Recently, our 4 year old has started ditching the simple pleasures for more serious study, so we decided to make a few more special activities to keep the 2 year old happy and busy. Here is one of them.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

I used the backing board from a broken A4 photo frame. You know, one of those things you keep for just in case you'll one day need it. If you ever happen to break an A4 photo frame, it's really worth hanging on to this stuff as it's durable and strong.

I also used a pack of 20 Go Bamboo pegs, which I'll use for the clothesline once the activity has lived a good life. You really do need bamboo or wooden pegs for this activity, as glue doesn't hold well against plastic. You'll also need coloured scrap paper, fabric scraps, glue, a black permanent marker, ruler and double sided tape.

METHOD

It's sooo easy! Just rule a line on one about 2 inches from the bottom long edge. Do the same for the top and divide both into 10 even blocks using your permanent marker. Draw your dots (as pictured) on the lower edge of the board, then cut and tape your coloured paper and that side is done!

Taking 10 of the pegs, cut and tape small pieces of the paper to your pegs, so that each colour 'slab' on the board has a matching peg. On the other side of these 10 pegs, you'll need to draw the dots for the number matching game.

On the other side of the board, we created a pattern matching game. For this, I used 10 pieces of scrap fabric, each with a clear small pattern.

I kid you not, this activity kept our 2 year old entertained for a full 35 minutes last week. This is a long time by 2 year old standards!

I wish I could claim this as an original ME idea, but like most of my ideas, this was inspired by something I'd seen on Pinterest. Thanks Pinterest!

© Oz Baby Trends 2012