Here’s a fun homemade matching activity to help toddlers and preschoolers develop shape recognition and matching skills! With this DIY Halloween Matching Game, kids can match up textured and patterned Halloween shapes like bats, cats, pumpkins and leaves and owls.
With Halloween approaching, we’ve being doing lots of spooky crafts and activities here in my daycare. The toddlers and preschoolers particularly love this homemade matching game I recently made out of wallpaper samples.
Related: Homemade Leaf Matching Activity for Toddlers and Preschoolers
As I’ve mentioned before, I have this awesome stash of wallpaper sample books, that my local paint store was happy to donate to our daycare instead of throwing them in the trash.
I can’t tell you how much I LOVE using these wallpaper samples for our daycare crafts and activities. They’re especially great for matching activities like this one.
I love the colours, patterns, and the textures of the paper. Some pages are puffy and thick, some are slick, or bumpy or glossy. It’s a great alternative to buying scrapbooking paper which can get expensive.
I chose four simple Halloween and Fall shapes to use for this matching activity: Pumpkins (which kind of look like apples, but hey, apples work for fall too), bats, owls, and fall leaves.
How to Make our Halloween Matching Game
To make our matching game, I cut out my shapes, making duplicates of each one.
One set of the duplicates, I glued to a piece of white cardboard. The other set, was for the kids to hold and match up to the shapes on the cardboard.
In the photos below, you can see the kids matching up the loose shapes to the pieces on the cardboard.
Here, we’re matching up the leaves with identical patterns and textures.
And here we are matching up the bats.
The children had a great time making all the matches and they’ve been playing with this activity for days.
Don’t you just love a homemade activity that’s cost-free and easy to make? When it helps with skill development and keeps the kids entertained it’s such a win-win!
Keep this homemade matching game in mind for other themes and holidays too! I’m planning on making a similar activity for Christmas. Just think of all the shapes we’ll be able to use: gingerbread men, Christmas trees, stars, stockings… so many possibilities!
More homemade matching activities:
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
Linda
Those are awesome!! I just got a few books of wallpaper samples thanks to your great advice. Can’t wait to use them!
happyhooligans
Oh GOOD! You will love them! Those books open up a whole world of opportunity! I’m even thinking of using some of the really beautiful pages as gift wrap!