It’s official, my 18 month old micro preemie is bridging the gap between her adjusted age (little over 18 months) and her adjusted age (14 months). The problem at this point is keeping her challenged without frustrating her. So, I was at Target since it’s impossible to get in and only purchase what you came for, I ended up in the $1 area and I got a toddlers paradise worth of things. I picked up a few coloring books because she is now like to “color”. We are working on learning to not just jag the crayon although she maybe she’s just perfecting her Pointillism technique, what do I know!
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| Old Maid from Target $1 |
I also picked up a $1 pack of Old Maid cards by Crayola which I used to play a matching game with Little Miss Busy Pants. I only pulled out 4 sets of matching cards at a time. I would lay four cards down, hold 4 in my hand. She would “pick a card” and then I’d ask her to find the match. Example, “this is the pig. Can you find a pig?” This was WAY over her head, she just wanted all the cards and she also wanted to just fold them in half. Fail!
But this got me thinking about games I could play with a young toddler that would challenge her, lead to working on more complex cognitive skills and still be budget friendly. So off I went to the 2nd worst place to go if you are trying to live on a budget…Michael’s! And that’s where I found it, my young toddler friendly, matching game, well an improvised version that is. Searching the aisles, I looked for something that was easy for her to recognize and identify and I found just what I needed in the scrapbook section, Sesame Street Crafting Chipboard Embellishments.
Here’s how we set it up. The pack comes with individual character cut outs along with round “headshot” coins with each characters cute little mug printed on them.
I held the round disc/coins and placed a few of the characters in a small container. I would then hold up a disc and ask her to find that character in her container. It went something like this.
Mommy: “Who’s this?” (holding Elmo disc)
Sofie: “ELMO!”
Mommy: “That’s right! Can you find Elmo? (point to container) Where’s Elmo? Say, Elmo where are you?”
Sofie: (Looks through container) “ELMO!”
Granted that was on a good run. Sometimes we got it, sometimes we didn’t. If it was a miss, I would stay positive and say “who did you find, that’s ::insert character name::”. This turned into a huge success and has been a fun rainy day game that lasts maybe 15-20 min. She practices her memory and matching skills and it’s fun to watch her reaction when she find a “new” character every time she searches. That’s a win in our book!