Game « Shannon's Tot School

“I Spy” – Montessori Style

Sweet Pea was about 3 years old.

From: ”I Spy” is a well known children’s game, but in this version, the clues are sounds instead of colors. This is a classic Montessori activity that helps children begin to recognize phonetic sounds. I first read about it in David Gettman’s book Basic Montessori Learning Activities [...]

Memory Matching Game with Hershey’s Kisses

Sweet Pea is 4 years old.

From: This easy activity was from The Activity Mom. (Her site has a whole bunch of fantastic ideas and you should definitely check it out if you haven’t yet.)

Note: We used simple Christmas words for this activity, but you could also draw shapes for younger tots, use [...]

Sequencing Cards

Sweet Pea was 4 years old.

From: One of our friends gave us a set of Brain Quest Cards and Sweet Pea went crazy over the ones that involved story sequencing. Sequencing is a great early literacy activity so I found these heavy cardboard sequencing cards on Amazon for her. I also bought a [...]

Golf Tee Marble Balance

Sweet Pea is 42 months old.

From: Here is an easy activity from Pink and Green Mama and A Bit of This and A Bit of That.

Material:

Styrofoam block. (We got ours from Micheal’s.) Golf tees. Marbles. (For some reason, I had difficulty finding marbles. I ended up buying them from the [...]

Penny Drop Game

Sweet Pea is 39 months old.

From: I was inspired by this penny drop game at Tired, Need Sleep.

Material:

10 Muffin tin liners, coffee filters or paper circles. 2 Crayons. 10 Pennies.

Procedure:

Let your tot color half of the circles one color while you color the remaining ones a different [...]

The Category Game

Sweet Pea is 37 months old.

From: My parents used to play this super quick and easy game with me.

Materials:

At least 2 willing players.

Procedure:

Ask your tot if they would like to learn how to play ” The Category Game”. When your tot agrees, say, “I am going [...]

Grid Game with Jumbo Dice

Sweet Pea is 30 months old.

From: I read about a grid game on Amy’s great blog Teach Mama, where she stated that she originally got the idea from this Explorations blog. I modified her idea because I happened to have a jumbo sized die that I [...]

Matching Game

Sweet Pea is 29 months old.

Material:

6-12 pairs of matching picture cards. ( I found a cute little Nemo Matching Game in Target’s Dollar Spot, but obviously you could play this with any Memory card game set or even make your own.)

Procedure:

Go [...]