Roll a Dice and Decorate the Tree Game

I have been teaching Baby Sign Language classes to parents and educators this fall and I wanted a game that would include numbers and colours.

With Christmas happening soon I thought it would be fun to create a game that I could try with my grand daughter.

So that is how Roll a Rice and Decorate a Tree game came to be.

 The dice are made from small wooden cubes.

The tree is cardboard covered with felt.

And the lights (or leaves) are felt too.

The idea is to roll both dice, count the dots, decide on the colour rolled then add that many lights to the tree.

This is her first time using a die so she spent a lot of time figuring out how to maneuver it in her hands and drop it.

I tried encouraging her by rolling the die with dots while she rolled the one with colours.

In this game, I believe, are too many steps for her age.

I will try to create one where she can roll the die and then just match it to the colour.

Memory Matching Game

A new card game.

I took pictures of items around the house.  

Items that the Little One are familiar with.

I took pictures of eight things and made double copies.

The game is just like Memory or Concentration.  You turn over one card then pick a second if they are the same you keep them.  If they don't match you turn them back over.

 Signs that we worked on were same, different, your turn and my turn.

 The first time we played we used four matching pictures, so eight cards.

Then second time we played we used all eight pictures for a total of 16 cards.

 Opa joined in the game.

She was pretty excited to find two the same.

Ocean Matching Game

I'm slowly introducing games to the little one and this is one that I had created a few years ago.

I had gathered items from my ocean bin and took pictures of each of item.

The idea is that she picks one toy and tries to find the picture that is the same.

This was her first time seeing these toys so she spent some time looking at each.

She especially liked the shark and was intrigued with it's wide open mouth.

She stuck her finger in it a few times and mimicked it.

She even cuddled it while saying mom.

She quickly picked up on the matching idea and would challenge me by placing a wrong toy on a picture and say 'same' in a questioning tone.

As she pulled more and more toys out she now began to look closer at the pictures.

Her second favourite is the clown fish.

The game ended when she went away to cuddle the shark.

We did play it again when mom and dad came home.

She surprised me by signing 'different' accurately.

What kind of games do you play with toddlers?

Buddy's Roll, Collect and Create

Today we got together with our big buddies and headed outside.

Each buddy pair had a nature bag

that contained three picture cards and a die.

The idea is that they draw a picture card then roll the dice.

Count how many spots then collect that many of the picture.

For example, the picture card says stick and he rolls a 4 then he collects

four sticks.

After the buddies drew each of the three cards and collected everything

we gathered in the sand box to create art with our collection.

Some even made stories to go with their art.

"We made a person with a weapon", said the little buddy.

"That's not school friendly", said the big buddy.

I walked on but when I came back they had changed it to

"a baseball player with a bat".

And on my last walk around the group they had changed it again

to make a 'big eared mouse baseball player".

Hide and Seek Game

                 
                         
      
   This is how it started, searching under all the baskets to find matches.
                           
Then I noticed that the surprise of finding a small toy hiding was more exciting; like a Peek-a-boo game.
   
It didn’t matter what was underneath.  And like playing with the box instead of the present, the little baskets were more attractive then the toy to this toddler.
 
I continued to observe a few older children that began to sort and group the toys.
 
               
Then others began to put them in a row.  I see the beginning of patterning.
       
                      They also used them as little finger puppets. 
The parent in the first picture was using wonderful facial expressions to talk about 'scary'.
The second child worked hard placing the kitten puppets on her fingers without any help.  Looking at her face I wonder what she is thinking?  Is she telling herself a story?  Is she counting?  Is she wondering how they feel on her fingers?