F Week- Football Matching Game and Book

I created my first matching game for T week when Trip was really liking Thomas and Friends. A couple of weeks ago, I made a welcome sign for our door that has the logos of our favorite sports teams. Each time Trip sees it, he likes to say the names of the teams and he's actually quite good at it. 

With that in mind, I took those same logos, plus a few more, and made him another simple matching game. I usually put all of the cards out and ask him to find a certain team. Sometimes he sees a team he wants to start with and just goes for it. He caught on to the concept quickly with the Thomas game, so when he saw these new cards come out, he knew just what to do. Eventually, we will be able to play "memory" or "concentration" with these same cards, but at 25 months, we're just not there yet. You can find my cards here if you would like to make some of your own (please limit these to your own personal use- thanks!)

The other thing I did was write a simple book about the football teams that we like. As a teacher, I created mini-books all the time, so it was fun to make one for Trip.

I bound the book with an adaptation of something I saw on Pinterest. It's super simple and easy, but very effective. Just punch holes in the paper, put a rubber band through two holes, and slip the rubber band ends through a paperclip. Done!

I put the paperclips in the front, but they could also go in the back so that all you see in the front are the clean lines of the rubber bands.

 

I included the teams that all of us like,

as well as Daddy's favorite,

Mommy's favorite,

and our housemates' favorites. Trip loves to look at the book and is getting pretty good at saying whose team each one is.

T Week- Thomas and Friends

Since Thomas is one of Trip's favorite characters, I knew T week had to include some Thomas activities. Other than watching his two Thomas DVDs, we used Thomas in three other ways too.

Each week we're making a paper letter to hang on Trip's bedroom door or in his room. I figured that Thomas would be perfect to cover our T. Since I didn't have any Thomas stickers, I printed a bunch of the same image of Thomas and cut them out. I then put some double-sided tape on the back of each one. Trip stuck some of them on and was done, so I ended up finishing it myself at the end of the week. It now hangs on his door and he likes to touch it each day.

I thought it would be fun to make some sort of matching game as well. I found images of Thomas and his friends online and made some cards to print. Once the cards were printed and cut, I laminated them to make them more durable. Eventually they can also be used as a memory/concentration type game, but for now I just ask Trip if he can find Gordon, for example, and then tell him that we need to find two Gordons. After a couple of times playing the game, he caught on quickly and would find both cards right away.

You can download a PDF of my matching cards for your own personal use here.

I had also seen a Thomas Tot Book on 1+1+1=1 that I liked, so I decided to make one of my own. I used the free downloads of "How Many?" and "Shapes with Thomas" and then created my own "Colored Trains" book with a coloring sheet I found here.


I used a Thomas coloring sheet from the official Thomas web site for the cover.


The whole thing fits nicely in a gallon zip-top bag to store it safely and transport it easily.


This will be a good book to bring with us if we have to wait somewhere for an appointment and will be a good reminder of things we did during T week.