How to Make a Matching Game with Your Children Easily

Making a matching game with your children can be as simple or as detailed as the creators would like. Drawing pictures, cutting out and gluing pictures, using stickers, or writing words or sentences children are learning makes a fun matching game for the whole family. Younger children might enjoy using their favorite matching stickers to decorate the cards while older children might write spelling words or concepts they are learning in science or history.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• 24 ~ 2 inch by inch squares of white paper
• 24 ~ 2 ½ inch by 2 ½ inch squares of colored paper
• Clear contact paper
• Pens/markers/crayons/stickers/pictures
• Glue

1. Cut out squares of white and colored paper.

2. Have children draw pictures, glue pictures on, put stickers on, or write words and sentences they are learning on the white squares. They should draw/write the same thing on two squares to make matches.

3. Glue the decorated white squares onto the colored paper so the design cannot be seen through the back side of the white paper.

4. Cover the paper squares with clear contact paper to keep the squares clean and flat.

5. Cut one piece of contact paper about 2 feet long.

6. Fold the contact paper in half ~~if the protective sheet were not there, the sticky sides would be together~~ to make a crease in the middle before removing the thin protective sheet from the sticky side.

7. Open the contact paper up, and lay flat with the sticky side up.

8. Carefully remove the protective sheet so the sticky side is exposed.

9. Apply as many paper squares as will fit on to the sticky side from the crease out.

10. Fold over the contact paper to completely cover the squares and smooth out bubbles and ridges in the contact paper.

11. Cut out contact paper covered squares.

12. Repeat steps 5 through 11 until all squares are covered with clear contact paper.

13. Play the game.

Resources

• How to Play the Matching Game with Children