Welcome back to the Tiny Tot Book Club! My daughter Reagan has always been a little bookworm. (Which totally warms this mama bookworm’s heart!) Now that she is two, I want to up the ante for how she engages with the books we are reading together. We will be working our way through some of our favorites and pairing a fun activity, craft, or treat with each one! Follow along with us, and if you haven’t already, go check out week one!
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This week we focused on an Eric Carle classic, Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? When Reagan enjoys a book, she tends to go in phases when that’s the only one she wants to read. Over, and over…and over. Right now it’s this one and Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear?, so it was an obvious choice for this week’s project. Honestly, we probably read it eleven times just while we played with this match game.
I wanted to create a matching game featuring the colorful animals we meet in Brown Bear. While you can probably find images online of the original illustrations from the book, I wanted to avoid any kind of copyright infringement from the Eric Carle franchise, so I downloaded these images from 1 Plus 1 Plus 1 Equals 1.
I chose the smaller version of the animals, and printed them out on card stock. I cut them into squares, and then cut each animal evenly in half. Since they’re made of paper, I know they won’t last forever, but I wanted them to last more than five minutes, so I covered each piece with a layer of clear packing tap e as a sort of faux-laminating. (If you have access to a laminating machine, you could probably do this way faster and easier.)
We played with these a few different ways. After I matched a couple on my own to show her what I wanted her to do, I would hand her one half of an animal and have her find the other half and match them up.
Next, as I was reading the book, I would ask her to find both pieces of that particular animal and match them up. It was a great way for her to practice finding the colors and animals in a mixed up pile.
Once they’ve mastered the matching, why not have a little silly fun and create some mixed up creatures?!
This was such a fun way to practice colors, matching, and following directions (“find me the blue horse”). What is your favorite Eric Carle book? Make sure and sign up for post updates so you can follow along with our Tiny Tot Book Club activities!
little green pear 