The past few days I have needed some quick activities to occupy my littles. We’ve been getting lots of rain and that has meant plenty of inside time for us. With COVID-19 still being an immediate risk, I can’t take the kids out of the house to visit the aquarium, have a play date, or even go to the store. That means a lot of invitations to play and being creative! Lucky, I love getting creative with my littles. This Cookie Color Match game is so simple, you’ll want to set it up daily!
My kids absolutely love playing with their cookie letters. They use them in their kitchen, they pack them to ‘go on trips’, they sort them by color, they count them, they feed them to their animals, and the list goes on! The one thing we really don’t do is play the actual game that they are meant for, haha! We’ll get more into that now that they are a bit older but, they are great additions to play for us.
When you are setting up play activities for your kids, do you ever feel like you have to choose a child to gear the activity towards because it really only focuses on one specific skill? I get it! Now that I have 2 kiddos around the Preschool age, it can be difficult to determine who to focus the activity on. That is why I love creating activities that have multiple learning opportunities. My littles are just over a year and a half apart and are on different learning levels. My oldest has mastered basic skills and my middle kiddo is just digging into that territory. They love playing together and when I create an activity, I want it to benefit both of them. This cookie color match game challenged both of my kiddos all while being fun and super easy to put together. I even had my oldest help me set it up – check out details on how, below!
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Materials
How To
Big picture; the point of this activity is for your kiddos to match the cookie color to the same colored dot on the paper. But, check out some of our enrichment ideas below!
Getting this activity set up is super simple. First, you need to know how many letters of each color you have. I used my oldest for this step by having him sort the cookies by color and then count each pile.
Once you know how many cookies of each color you have, draw the same amount of dots on your paper. For example, if you are using 4 yellow cookies and 6 red cookies – don’t feel like you have to use all of them at once if you want to focus on specific letters or colors! – draw 4 yellow dots and 6 red dots on your paper.
When all of your dots are drawn, place the cookies back in the cookie pot, or into a bowl, and let your littles get to matching!
Related: Love the cookie letters as much as us? Check out another fabulous activity that we have done with them!
What are my littles learning?
This activity is super simple to pull together, but don’t let that fool you! There is some BIG learning here! For those littles just getting into the basic skills, the focus is on color matching and recognition. Cookie Color Match would be a great way to formally introduce colors, or check for learning by seeing which colors your child has mastered.
For the kiddos who are diving into the world of the alphabet, this activity will focus on letter recognition and, potentially, letter matching if you use the enrichment suggestion – in Enrich The Activity – below.
My kids had a blast with this activity! They worked together (a definite Mom win!) to put the letters in the right place and even checked their work, lifting each letter, at the end. I was so proud watching Mr. 4 help his brother during this activity. He helped him stay focused and even asked him questions that I would normally ask. “What color is this cookie?” “Where does this cookie go?” “How many cookies do we have left?” It was a proud Mama moment for sure! (tear, tear)
Enrich The Activity
Looking for some ways to make this activity even more enriching and long lasting? Check out some of these ideas:
Let your kiddos help with set up
Allowing your littles to help with the set up not only allows for you to have them engaged while you throw this game together, but it also gives you an opportunity to add more learning to the activity. I first asked my kiddos to sort the cookies by color so we could see which colors I would need to use when writing. Then, I asked my oldest to count each color group so I would know how many dots to draw on the paper.
Use Capital Letters
If your child is working on letter identification, turn this into a matching game for additional exposure to capital and lowercase letters. Instead of drawing colored dots, write the matching capital letter for each lowercase cookie.
Add a Fine Motor Element
Looking to work those little muscles a bit more? Try adding a writing element. Once your little has matched all of the cookies, remove them and then ask your sweetie to connect all of the same colored dots. For example, begin on a blue dot and draw a line connecting the rest of the blue dots together. This requires a lot of fine motor control as well as strategic thinking to figure out the best sequence to connect the dots. As a bonus, it looks like a massive colorful web at the end! My oldest really enjoyed that part, haha.
Enjoy the Time
No matter what you choose to do, enjoy this time with your kiddos. Life is crazy right now and spending some quiet time with these little people that we created can make all of the difference. I hope that your kiddos enjoy this one as much as mine did! <3
Want to practice the alphabet in another way? This Paw Patrol ABC Rescue activity is always a winner in my home!
