ABC Match

I found this great Garanimals ABC game at Wal-mart. I think it was only $8. It has SO MANY uses.

On one side of the card, there is an alphabet letter, and the other side has a picture whose sound begins with that letter. There are two sets of letters.


We have played this game several different ways. We have done a basic alphabet match on the board, and played a concentration-style game. We did an initial sound match, in which Delaney picked a picture, identified the sound it began with, then found that letter and placed the picture on top, and a concentration-style game with inital sounds as well.

I think there are about 15 other things I could think of that we haven't done yet, but will once she is older...final sounds with pictures, spelling and sounding out words, abc order, etc.

And all for under $10!

When I work with Delaney, I have to be very aware of her attention span limits. She has a pretty good attention span, but when I can see that she is losing interest or getting REALLY wiggly, I always give her the option to "play this again later". Sometimes she will settle back down and pay closer attention, and other times she is ready to be done. Even if we are SO CLOSE to finishing whatever we are doing, if she has been working at it for awhile and wants to stop, I do (for instance, the picture below). If I am forcing her to do an activity when she is done with it, she isn't going to learn anything except which buttons of mine she can push to annoy me.  The whole point is for her to learn something, so I don't worry or feel bad if we don't fully complete something to to degree that I wanted to. As long as she is making progress and we have fun, it is a successful activity!


And, P.S., when I say "REALLY WIGGLY", I mean to the point that things are getting knocked over or she is just running around. Two and three year olds are always a little wiggly no matter what, even if it is the best activity in the whole world.