Day 6 Montessori-inspired Christmas Activity

Matching Activity

Matching is a very important pre math skill. Here is more on how matching and sorting can form the basis of future Maths understanding in your child, Today on day 6 of our activity series, I will take you through a simple fun matching activity. Usually toddlers start showing cues for matching at around 1 year or so. They would want to put the right lid on jars if there are multiple jars lying around. You can take this cue forward and gradually present more challenging matching activities. After matching is mastered, you can go on for sorting!

AGE GROUP – 1 year onwards

MATERIALS NEEDED

• 2 copies of printouts of this printable with Christmas stuff
• I will be using the same printable for some more activities in the next few days. I had already mentioned this printable (along with a couple of more) in the day 2 post. So if you have missed the day 2 post, go back to it, download other printables, get them printed so that you are ready for the coming activities as well in this series.
• Lamination pouches, cotton handkerchief, scissors and iron – if you want to laminate the print outs.
• Christmas tree decoration items (mini versions) that we used in Day 3 and Day 4 activities

TIME REQUIRED FOR ACTIVITY PREPARATION – 15-30 Minutes depending on whether you are laminating at home or not

HOW & WHAT TO DO

• Laminate one copy of this printable in its entirety. From the second copy of the printout, cut individual pictures and laminate them separately.
• Tell the names of all the items on this sheet to your child. Now based on the age, understanding, interest and skillset of your child, you can pick up one or more activities in the points below.
• I Spy Game: Take the first laminated printout, ask your child, “I spy with my little eye, a Santa”, can you find the Santa. So on and so forth.
• Picture to Picture Matching: Place the first printout on a table, give one item from the second printout set and ask your child to match it. With so many items on the sheet, it is a challenging task for the child to find, identify and match the items. For a younger toddler, you can have just 3 or 4 items in the first printout so that it is easier to find the items to match.
• Picture to Object Matching: Place individual items on a table, of which you have the mini versions of decorations. For example, I had mini versions of Santa, wreath, ball, bells etc so I used just those cards. Give these decoration items in a basket and ask your child to match the objects with the respective pictures on the cards. Picture to object matching is the next step to picture to picture matching. So you can introduce it according to your child’s skill level.

SKILLS DEVELOPED

• Matching skills (pre math skill)
• Sensorial exposure –  touch and feel experience of the tree and decoration items
• Language building – explore and talk about names of characteristics of decoration items, their shapes, colors, textures etc.
• Learning of culture and tradition

CAN SOME MATERIALS BE REPLACED?

If you do not want to laminate the printables, you can paste them on cardboard and still use it for the activities. But I prefer lamination because it makes the stuff durable, more so because I will be using them in multiple activities and would want to preserve them for next year Christmas as well.

HOW TO TWEAK FOR OLDER KIDS

• You can enhance their spatial skills and creativity by asking them to arrange the individual cards in the same matrix (row column arrangement) as they appear in the first printout.

• You can play a memory game. Just place the matching individual cards upside down on the first printout. Then pick one card, see what it is and then remember what it was. After picking up couple of cards and remembering them, ask your child where is ‘x’ item, where is ‘y’ item. It helps to sharpen memorization skills.

• You can introduce the concept of row & column if your child is ready for it

Read More On Baby