Learning Letters with Magnets

I've started working on teaching the alphabet to my almost preschoolers, and have been trying to find a letter activity that would grab their attention.  They love their magnet doodlers, so I picked up a set of letter magnets and thought we could put the two together for a fun alphabet learning activity.

The set up for this could not be easier. I put out the magnet doodlers and the box of magnets and invited the boys to play.

I let them explore and they quickly found that they could stamp the letter magnets onto the board and make letter shapes.

As they stamped we talked about which letters we were making and what starts with those letters.

I did a few and let them try to guess which letter it was. E is for elephant!

We have been having a lot of fun with these and I think they are starting to get the hang of which letters are which. The magnet set that I bought also includes numbers, so we are going to try that next!

Want to try this at home? Here's what you need! (affiliate links)

Learning Colors with Play Dough and Crayons

My boys have been learning colors and they want to talk about the colors of everything they see! They are also big on drawing and coloring, so of course we have a lot of broken crayon pieces around the house. I was gathering them up to throw them away when I got an idea for a fun color matching game.

This is a really easy preschool activity that helps reinforce learning colors and uses materials you probably already have at home - play dough and broken crayon pieces. Of course you can use whole crayons too, or a combination of both!

Here's the set up - I put 4 balls of different colored play dough along with an assortment of crayon pieces on our table and invited the boys to come play.

As they started sticking the crayon pieces into the play dough we talked about the colors of the dough and the colors of the crayons. I gave them some prompts like, "let's put the blue crayon into the white dough."

And "which colors are in the red dough?"

They had a lot of fun making their colorful creations and practicing the names of each color. This was such an easy activity, and pretty frugal too! Instead of throwing away our broken crayons, we put them in a bag to add to our play dough kit. We'll definitely be doing this one again!

Need any of the materials in this activity? Here you go: (affiliate links)


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Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site Matching & Learning Activity

My boys are in love with Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site right now. We read it before every nap and bed time, and one of my twins can often be heard reciting it to himself! Since they enjoy it so much, I thought we'd come up with a way to incorporate the book into our play, and do some learning too.

This was an easy activity to set up, and uses things you probably already have at home. Here's what you need:

• Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site book
• Bin or bucket large enough to hold all your supplies. I used a fabric bin and added a chalkboard label.
• Toy trucks that match the characters in the book: crane, cement mixer, dump truck, bulldozer, and excavator. If you don't have them all, that's OK! There are other items that you can use for the trucks you don't have.
• A small teddy bear or other small stuffed animal (ours was a bunny).
• Star and moon shapes. I used cookie cutters, but if you don't have those you can just cut a star and moon out of felt or foam.
• A small piece of fabric to use as a blanket.
• Pom pom balls.

Now you're ready to play.

I started with all the materials laid out and invited my boys to read with me. As we went through the story, we matched the trucks with their pictures on each page.

We also matched the star and the moon where we saw them on each page. And we made sure crane truck had his teddy bear.

We used pom pom balls to be our "dirt" for bulldozer.

And covered our trucks with a blanket so they could sleep.

Finally, when we were done, we put all our trucks to bed in their bin.

We have had so much fun with this activity! We keep the book and all the materials in the bin and my boys love to bring me the whole thing to read and play. They love the book even more (I didn't think that was possible!) and are learning matching and shape skills too.

Need any materials for this activity? Here you go! (affiliate links)

Match The Animal Book & Puzzle Activity

I love when my toddlers come up with a new activity and I get to share it with you. This is one of those times, and I hope your kids enjoy it as much as mine!

I love this activity because it is a simple, fun way to engage toddlers in object to picture matching skills, which are so important to their development.

For a wonderful explanation of how beneficial these skills are read the Benefits of Object-Picture Matching by Twodaloo.

We started with one of their favorite books: First 100 Words by Roger Priddy. (affiliate link)

This book has been a favorite for a long time, especially the last 2 pages which are all animals. My little guys are obsessed with animals right now!

We keep our books and puzzles in the same area, and one day the boys pulled out their wooden puzzles at the same time as this book.  We found that 2 of their puzzles - Melissa & Doug's Wooden Safari Puzzle (affiliate link) and Wooden Farm Puzzle (affiliate link) had a lot of the same animals as in the book. They started laying the animals on top of their pictures... and a new game was born!

The boys have so much fun with this - we often play when I'm looking for a quieter, wind down activity before dinner or bed. We get the puzzles out, open the book, and I'll ask questions like, "where's the pig?" and they match the puzzle piece to the book. For the pieces that don't have a match, I'll ask something like, "Is there an elephant on this page?" or "Is there a penguin on the puzzle?" We also practice making all the animal sounds too.

You can easily adapt this activity to any book with animal photos and other small animal toys. Or if your kids have other interests, there are wonderful pages in this book on vehicles and common household items too. So many possibilities! 

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, read my disclosure policy.