Learning Activities for Young Children {DIY Puzzle and Matching Game}

Games make great learning activities, especially for young children. In the guest post today, with Suja of Blog Me Mom, we are using hearts to teach letter recognition and number recognition to toddlers with a matching game and create C-V-C words with preschoolers by using a simple DIY puzzle. Kids Activities Blog hopes this activity helps your kids develop fine motor skills and shape differentiation.

Learning Activities

You will need this heart stencil for both the DIY puzzle and matching game.

Fold a cardstock paper three times, then cut out hearts and store them. You will have a stencil like the following image. Try to be as uniform as possible with the hearts.

Matching Game

Suja wrote down the numbers on a white sheet and placed it under the hearts stencil. The same numbers were to be written on the hearts cut outs. Then invite your toddler to come play matching.

She picks a heart number, we call it out loud and we find its right spot.

We did the same for letters as well. This method can be adapted for other learning topics, even for older kids.

DIY Puzzle

To make word building more fun I invited my preschooler to play this DIY puzzle. I picked out a few cvc words from some picture cards we have. I covered the word using a sticker and placed them next to the hearts stencil.

With the same letters written out on the hearts cut outs, she spelled out the words from the flash cards using the hearts letters.

When she starts working on a new picture card we sound out the word first and she tells me the beginning letters. Then it becomes a letter hunt of sort while she fishes for the heart letter from the pile. We continue building the word using the same method.

This puzzle type learning activity really worked well with my kids because it gave them a sense of playing while learning.

Suja is a mother of two and blogs at Blog Me Mom in an effort to share every day creations.

Thanks so much Suja for guest posting here at Kids Activities Blog! If you are interested in guest posting as well, please check out our contributor page.

More Kids Activities

Learning activities like these hands-on puzzles and games help children practice new skills while having fun. A matching game or DIY puzzle can be easily made and the pieces can be used over and over in various different ways. For more great kids activities like these, you may be interested in a few of these ideas: