- Toy blocks of different sizes (wooden or plastic)
- Different color markers
- Blank paper
- 1+ player
Recipe for Fun!
This game puts together two toys preschoolers love: puzzles and blocks! It’s a quick game to create, and one that may become a go-to fun (and educational) play idea for rainy afternoons. While it requires an adult to create the game board, children can play this game independently.
Tip: When laying out the blocks on paper, be sure to mix up the sizes and colors before you start tracing. Enlist older kids who need an activity to create game boards.
How to Create the Building Blocks Shape Matching Game:
- Collect blocks in a range of sizes and colors, and markers or pens that match each block’s color.
- Place each block the same piece of paper.
- Trace each block with the coordinating color market.
- Place the blocks in a group and mix them up.
- Challenge your child to play by matching the blocks to the outline of corresponding shape and color on the paper.
Benefits of Playing the Building Blocks Shape Matching Game for Kids: Games like this are more than just fun, they build real matching and sorting skills. Matching and sorting math skills sound small but they are foundational to your child understanding the principals of mathematics.
When kids connect the shapes on paper to their own blocks, they are connecting the 2D and 3D worlds and learning to match objects by their common attributes. You can help sharpen these skills further (and increase your preschooler’s math vocabulary!) by giving your child names for the shapes they are playing with, like square and rectangle.
When kids sort by color, they are working on the principals of classification. Learning to classify objects and group them together helps your child build logical and critical thinking skills.