Tiny Objects and Your Older Child

We first created our drawers of tiny objects when M was pretty tiny herself!  She's almost 6 now though, and the drawers have definitely evolved to better suit her learning needs.  

Bottom line: Tiny objects ROCK, we love them, and they'll never get old.

Here's how we play, now that she's older!

We unrolled two felt mats and I put an F and an O on each one.  Her job?  Classify and categorize the objects based on FARM animals and OCEAN animals!  She would name an animal, figure out what letter it started with, and then search the drawer to see if we had it.

And occasionally, she'd surprise herself and find something she hadn't thought of (a flipper, a skunk, a frog).

For this one, she sorted things she'd see at a PARK or at the BEACH.

Another fun one is to lay out a certain number of objects (I like to start with four).  I have three that are similar and one that is different.  Her task is to identify and EXPLAIN which one is different and WHY.  We did healthy/unhealthy foods, land/sea animals, animals that lay eggs/live birth, food that grows underground/on a vine, ect.

And while she loves ALL of these things, here's her favorite:

We dump a drawer (so everything starts with the same letter) on one felt mat.  She then uses the objects to tell a STORY!  As she uses each item, she moves it over to the other mat.  Seriously, she LOVES this and it is so awesome to cultivate vocabulary, creative writing, imagination... To name a few!  

I can't say enough about these alphabet drawers and HIGHLY recommend building up a collection of your own!! To save time you can find the Tiny Objects in our store, Time for Tots. 

Written by Jill