Color Matching Activities with IKEA Kids Dish Set

On a recent trip to IKEA, I picked up some new dishes for my kids.  The utensils, plates, cups, and bowls were each bagged separately for under $3 each.  I love practical learning and these have been great for color matching activities.

One way to start is to get out just the utensils, and have your child color match the fork, spoon and knife.  Then introduce the cups and have them place the utensils in the corresponding cup.  If you have everything out at the beginning, it could be overwhelming and your child could lose focus.

Match each color bowl to each coordinating plate.

Lastly, match each colored dish set together; the utensils, cups, bowls & plates.  Ta-da...as my younger daughter would say.

There are a lot of ways to incorporate color matching activities with these rainbow dishes.  A quick trip to the dollar store and you will find many choices:

Colored erasers

Chip clips

Colored popsicle sticks

Crayons

Pipe cleaners (cut in half)

Pom poms

Pom poms come in different shades of purple, green, etc.  This is a great way to talk about how colors can vary but still be in the same color family.  

To increase fine motor skills, think about introducing a spoon or plastic tweezers to pick up each pom pom.

I used construction paper and a one inch circle punch to create circles in a variety of colors.  You can see my post about color matching using egg cartons to see other ways to use the colored circles, pom poms and popsicle sticks.

Here is a photo of one of my daughters with her bed head doing a sorting activity involving beans.  

I hope this post inspires you to look in your cabinets or craft supplies to create learning opportunities for your kids from everyday items!

Color Matching Games with Egg Cartons

This blog post is about repurposing egg cartons for color matching activities with your toddlers!  As moms, we are always looking for new ideas and creative activities to encourage our kids curiosity for learning.  My girls are 1 1/2 & 3 1/2 and I rotate their toys frequently.  It's amazing to see the spark in their eyes when they play with something "new".  

I love to make learning activities from items I already have at home.  Once or twice a week, I try to set out new activities on a few of the bottom shelves in our family room.  It doesn't usually cost anything to make, I just go through my craft supplies or household items.  For example, the girls both loved when I set out two trays, each with an (empty) individual tea pot and bowl, funnel, makeup sponge, a Barbie and a small towel.  I only put water in when I can monitor them at their table, but they have a blast pouring the water back and forth, putting water on their faces with the sponges and bathing their Barbies.  I have another post on how to do color matching activities with a kids dish set.  Here are two egg carton color matching activities that are simple to create.  

Egg Carton Color Matching with Paper Circles & Pompoms

For the first project you will need:

A cardboard egg carton

One inch circle punch

Cardstock and/or scrap booking paper

School glue

Assorted pompoms

You could use a 6, 12 or 18 count cardboard egg carton, depending on the age of your child & how challenging you want to make it.  

For the cutout circles, I just went through my supply of cardstock and hole punched two of each color.  You could also choose patterned scrapbook paper for a little variety.

Cover one side of the circles with a basic school glue like Elmer's and press into the bottom of each section of the egg carton.  Let it dry overnight & you are ready to play!  

Your little ones can match up the circles, pompoms, and other items.  See my post on color matching with a rainbow colored dish set to get ideas on other things to color match.

Egg Carton Color Matching with Popsicle Sticks

For the second project you will need:

Styrofoam 18 count egg carton

Colored Sharpies

Scissors

Colored Popsicle sticks

I let my daughter help with the creation of this activity.  The first thing we did was to get our colored Sharpies (bought from Costco) & Popsicle sticks and decide which shade of Sharpie went best with each colored Popsicle stick.

Then I let my daughter color the bottom of each section of the egg carton.

Next, cut slits in the bottom of each section.  As you can see in my photos, if your kids want to put several sticks in one hole, it will tear on its own to a larger size.  And that's it, you're done!  

I lay the Popsicle sticks on a tray next to the egg carton.  Then my kids bring the whole tray over to the table to play!  I was inspired to set up Montessori style shelf activities by watching Jady A's channel on YouTube.  

 

Children practice several skills through these activities.  For my youngest child, she is working on her fine motor skill development.  For my oldest she is identifying colors and matching them with other objects of the same color.  I like to ask her questions like, "where is the yellow one?", "can you put two green Popsicles in the green hole? Good job!", etc.

I hope you enjoy creating these fun and simple egg carton learning activities with your kids!