Roll and Play Card Game for Toddlers

Idea courtesy: icanteachmychild.com

I have used the following colors and themes:

• Yellow:  Directions.  -- Up, Down, Right, Left
• Violet:  Body Parts.  --Point your nose, Touch your toes, Nod your Head, Show your ears
• Green:  Animal Sounds.  --Roar like a lion, Moo like a cow, Meoww like a cat, Quack like a duck
• Orange:  Counting.  -- Clap your hands two times, Blink 3 times, turn around once, Jump 4 times
• Blue:  Colors.  -- What colour is your dress/tshirt?, Show me something black, Bring your yellow ball, Get your pink bat
• Red:  Action Cards. -- Jump, Dance, Sing, Clap

This is how our cards look like

                      

         

 

   

Before the cards got their color

       

 

Use a soft dice with all the 6 colors. You can make one on your own, just follow the steps here.

DIY Butterfly Board game for toddlers

You can create your own board games to teach new things. I made this first board game for my 2-year old daughter. It is to help Miss. Butterfly find her way home. 

 The flowers and strawberry are to show the food that butterfly eats, and the spider's web and net are the possible dangers to the butterfly. Later I will bring in little rules to the game, when she has a play date.

• Landing on spider/net means a restart
• Landing on flower lets you advance by one step if you tell the correct color of the flower
• Landing on the strawberry lets you advance by 2 steps if you name the fruit correctly
• The one who reaches the home first is the winner
• Roll 1 on the dice to start
  

 This was our game as "Work in Progress"

That is our Miss. Buttefly, cut out from the cardboard/reused carton box and pasted on a bottle cap. And this is how you make your own soft dice.

ABC Board

You might have already seen the blog about using bottle caps for teaching alphabets. As your toddler begins to pick the alphabets one by one, you would also want them to know the sequence. I made a simple board for this. Again using carton box.

I added the ice-cream cones to give her the sense of orientation

You will be surprised to see how eager they will be to bring out the alphabets they are familiar with onto the board

This could also be a good board game on a play-date for toddlers

Potato heads for teaching colours

I made these potato shells using egg cartons- the ones made of paper pulp.I am using this as a teaching aid for colous. 

As I show her each color I place a bottle cap of the same colour as a hat for the potato head. My 2 year old found this really interesting, so much that the day I made it she took these potato heads to bead instead of her favorite soft toys :)

This is how I cut the egg carton and have glued together the 2 parts. I then painted them with acrylic colours. And then used a ball point pen for detailing the facial features. You could also use googly eyes and may be some black wool for hair.

Play with Numbers

You could introduce the world of numbers in a play way using bottle caps. Let your imagination run wild making a hungry caterpillar, number train and so on once you have them on the bottle caps.

Teaching the ABC's

 Alphabets on bottle caps can be a great way to introduce the ABC's to your Little One. Alphabet blocks end up with missing alphabets pretty soon, this set can be replenished anytime with marker and new bottle caps.
Worry not if you have a Doctor's handwriting ;) you could always use a stencil to get them right.

Stacking toys for teaching colours

Another simple use of bottle caps is to teach toddlers stacking as well as colours at the same time.

Sorting based on colours

A simple colour sorting activity for toddlers. All you need is bottle caps of different colours, a few containers to sort them into and that is it, can guarantee a minimum of 15 minutes of engagement for your tiny tot :)