How Many Ways Can You Play?

While I was making Elowyn a few more file folder games it occurred to me that not every one of my readers has a child the same age as me. So before I move on to another activity I thinks it’s worth one more post to show you just how versatile one game can be.

The first way would be good for a 2-4 year old. It really just depends where your child is at with letter recognition. Elowyn can match 2-3 correctly before she becomes annoyed and moves on. That is 100% ok!

The second way to play uses the same file folder and a second set of bees. Instead of matching letters the goal is to match the picture with the letter. A is for Ant, B is for Baseball, etc. I made this one for my niece who is 5 and started kindergarten this year.

In my post from the day before I talked about an easy way to store the pieces. Here’s a picture of the one for today. All I did was glue an envelope to the back of the folder and instant storage!

The third way to play happened by accident. When I first made the bees I used an app called PicCollage. I took a picture of the bee and put the letter on it with a text box. However the first set I made I just put the capital letters on them. After I printed it I remembered an article I read about Early Childhood Education and how even though children use and see lower case letters the most, they are usually taught uppercase letters…which is backwards. So I redid the bees with both upper and lower case letters. Since I had already printed a set I figured I should find a way to use them.

These are foam letters for the bath. I intend to play this game with her in the bathtub but didn’t want to share a naked picture of my kid! Tonight we will give this a go in the bath. Since the bees are laminated they will be water proof and we can play however we want.

While the letter games are a bit ahead of Elowyn, any interaction with letters is a positive thing. I will never push her to play these games and make her feel frustrated if she gets something wrong. I will always play this with her in a fun positive way and only if she wants to. Pushing the activity will make them not enjoy it.

Elowyn loved being involved even when my niece was playing the older version. She had fun handing her different bees and watching Everly place them on the hives.

I have now used both the animal matching and letter games to help with transitioning from playing to meal times, calming down Elowyn is upset, and just to have a fun time!