Life, as of Late

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Looking for ways to keep your little ones entertained that don’t include a screen? I’ve got you covered!

Here are a few simple, affordable, and creative activities that are engaging, but also aid in your child’s cognitive development through letter, shape, and color matching.

These activities are incredibly useful on days when I need to get some work done, but don’t want to turn to the television to keep my children occupied. It utilizes a few toys and materials you most likely have on hand or, if not, are fairly affordable and accessible for purchase at any major department store.

1. Magna-tile Templates

Everyone I know, whether a child or adult, LOVES magna-tiles, and for good reason. It truly tests your imagination, as there are endless possibilities.

A great way to incorporate magna-tiles into an organized activity is by creating templates for your little one. There are a multitude of templates available online, but you can create anything with the specific tiles available to you.

I love using sketchbook paper, which is more durable than printer paper.

Here are a few templates I’ve personally created using the shapes we had on hand:

My favorite way to set this activity up for my kids is to tape the templates to our refrigerator and having them place the matching magna-tiles over top, like so:

2. Color Matching Blocks

Another great activity is color-matching blocks. If you have a toddler, you probably have bag of these colorful blocks in your toy chest and, if not, they are fairly affordable and come in large sets.

Draw a rectangle, dividing it into separate blocks, like that of a set of stacked blocks. Color each block a different color.

Allow your kids to create a stack of blocks matching each of the colored templates.

My little ones love building with their blocks and this provides a great alternative for them that differs from their usual activities.

3. Letter Matching Using Bananagrams or Scrabble Pieces

I am obsessed with the game, Bananagrams! It’s a super fun and lively, fast-paced game, pretty similar to Scrabble, but without a board. If you’ve never played it, I’d highly recommend it as the newest addition to your board game collection.

Now, this next activity isn’t actually for your kiddos to play Bananagrams or Scrabble (however, that’d be very impressive if they could), but it does utilize small lettered pieces, as conveniently provided in both game sets.

What you’ll do is write various 2-5 letter words on a piece of paper, spacing them apart for a banangrams letter to fit on top of and task your children with matching each of the letters with their associated square to ultimately complete the word.

This is a great way to familiarize them with the alphabet and offer exposure to the pronunciation of specific letters in differing scenarios. You can make it as simple or as challenging as you see fit, depending on your child’s capabilities, which I love. It also doubly serves as a great interactive or independent activity.

These three activities took less than an hour to put together and have served their purpose immensely. Rather than depending solely on free-play, having these options on hand is incredibly convenient when I want something more structured.

I hope you enjoyed these ideas and are able to implement them within your own rotation of toys or activities! 🙂