Kiddie Korner Thursday - toys= games

Kiddie Korner Thursday – Hand me down toys = games

 

Being a stay at home mom, I love being able to be hands on in my son’s learning. Being a stay at home mom also means that we only have my husband’s income as our steady income, meaning I can’t go out and spend tons and tons of money on all of the super cool new learning toys that are out there. Last year we put a pretty penny down for a giant book set that will help Miles learn from the age of two all the way into his college years… which is great but sometimes he doesn’t want to read books he wants to play.

I have been trying to invent ways to take his toys and turn them into some sort of game that will teach him something… anything actually but my favorite thing right now is hand me down toys. I will accept any sort of game/puzzle/learning toy for any age and find a way to cater to his age with it.

I will show you an example here today. I received this really cute wooden set of dominos with animals on them. Being almost 2 and a half I think dominos might be a little too advanced for my bugs still. He is a very smart cookie, but if he could correctly play dominos I am pretty sure I would poop my pants! Not literally, but maybe literally!!

Here is what the dominos look like.

 

 

We play almost like a game of memory. I will show him all of the animals on the blocks and then turn them all upside down.

 

I will call out the name of an animal and he has to look through the dominos until he finds that animal. He then has to show it to me and set it to the side.

 

Sometimes we will do it based on color, sometimes we stick just to the names of the animals. Here is a video of us playing/ learning.

 

If we do a round of naming the animals, we will follow up by sorting the animals by colors!

                              Surveying the animals…

 

 

 

                    Now in deep thought about the animals….

 

                               Finally ready to sort!

I don’t do this game with him every day but try to do it a couple times a week! Look around your house and see what you have that you can turn into a learning tool for your little ones, that might trick them into thinking they are just playing!

 

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