Making Preschool Games/Puzzles

I was very motivated last week with making some of our own tools. I found these ideas from links at Preschool Corner. If I could figure out how to put links on here, I would. However, for now I guess I'll just settle for putting pictures and descriptions.

These are lowercase letter puzzles. I downloaded the patterns for the letters, cut them out and then traced them onto foam pieces. Then, I cut out the pieces from foam pieces. Next, I would like to make the uppercase puzzles. I thought this was a cheap alternative to the wooden pieces made by "Handwriting without Tears."

lowercase foam alphabet puzzles

Next, I made an uppercase/lowercase letter match. I was pretty sure that Peaknuckle knew all her upper and lowercase letters; but, I had never had her do them all at once to see. To make it more interesting, I added the duck. She is way more likely to be excited about something if there is a pretend "piece" to it. We pretended the duck had accidently broken all of her eggs. She was very sad, and we had to help her put them all back together. Peaknuckle loved the thought of helping the duck and eagerly put the pieces together.

From "Explorations" (another blog I would link to if I knew how), I found this cute idea for a math game. It was a little easy for Peaknuckle, but she enjoyed it and it went along with our Fall Theme. We practiced adding while we did this. She enjoyed eating the pumpkin candy when we finished.

At my MOPS group, we made these cute "travel boxes." The metal boxes can be found at the dollar sections at Target or Michael's. I decorated one side with Cars and the other side with Princesses so both Peaknuckle and Bean would be pleaased. Inside we placed foam shapes with magnets on the back. I was surprised at how entertaining this was to both children while we drove. It also worked well for entertaining them in a restraunt. Peaknuckle liked to make pictures with them. Bean enjoyed making a mess out of them.