Page 27 - teachYourChildToRead

Two years to three years 27

Activity – Wooden Jigsaws
Jigsaws are an ideal way to practice matching shapes, (many
libraries have wooden jigsaws available to borrow). Begin
with large jigsaws with two to four wooden picture shapes
and overtime gradually increase the number of picture shapes
until your child can independently complete jigsaws that have
twelve to sixteen shapes.

Matching similar pictures
Once your child gains skills and is successfully matching sixteen different
looking pictures, introduce pictures that look similar to each other. For
example lots of pictures of horses or trucks. The ability to match pictures
that are similar further develops their visual recognition skills; the
development of visual recognition is an important pre-reading skill.

Another way to practice matching is to make a visual shopping list. Do
this by cutting out selected items you want to purchase from a magazine
or advertising mail, pasting them onto your child’s very own shopping
list and then assisting them to find the exact same product on the
supermarket shelf.

Matching shapes

When children are successfully matching sixteen pictures that are similar
to each other, we introduce black shapes to match. Matching shapes is the
final step for two to three year old children before introducing alphabet
letters.

Activity - Snap
Using four sets of the shape cards, deal the cards into two
separate piles one for each player. Take it in turns to pick up
the top card in your pile, turn it over and place it onto one
main pile. ‘Snap’ by putting your hand on the pile when you
see two identical shapes on top of each other. The game is over
when all shape cards are matched.

When playing with the various shapes, don’t worry about naming them.
Children only need to know the names of the basic shapes; circle, square
and triangle.