Have you ever seen those social posts with the beautiful figurines with matching cards to go with them? I know my Instagram feed is filled with them! Matching is such a great way to explore language, enhance learning and visual discrimination. There are a countless number of ways that you can learn a variety of things with a matching activity. But that doesn’t mean that you have to go out and buy figurines and then buy a set of matching cards to go with it for your child to be able to enjoy this type of work.
Take a look at what you may already have at home. Start with your child’s toys. Are there any figurines that your child is currently into at the moment? That may be a good place to begin since it’s always a good idea to follow your child’s interests. If your child is in love with animal figures at the moment, then use those and then simply create matching cards yourself! Take a photo of the toy and then print it out, or if you find a photo of it on the internet from the toy distributor, use it for personal use only. The photo above is when I made matching wooden discs to go with our animal figurines that we already had to create an activity with a toy we already owned. These were printed on paper, cut out and adhered with mod podge. I absolutely loved the sturdiness of the wood and the circular shape. And my son was a fan!
Now that my son is a bit older, he is absolutely obsessed with cars! He received a gift set for his birthday and since the cars came in a variety of colors, I thought it would be great to create a set of matching cards so that we can work on visual discrimination but also learn colors as well! Needless to say he loved this activity as it involved his favorite toy. This one we also mixed it up by sometimes just using color flash cards and matching the toy to the corresponding color.
Some other ideas is to do safe objects around the house if you don’t want to use a toy. You can use a spoon, a ball, a safe cup, anything really, as long as it is safe for your child to explore and play with. Also, not everything has to be object to picture matching. If you have a memory game, that could be used as a matching activity if they are too young to play it as the intended game. Or simply use a deck of cards or Uno for matching or even sorting!
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