This Montessori learning activity focuses on matching miniature North American wildlife animals to their matching realistic photo cards. Children lay out the cards & place the miniature animal on the matching picture. This activity is small enough to take with you & can be extended into pretend play with the mini animals. Matching Skill - Visual Discrimination: This activity focuses on more advanced preschool matching. The objects are not an exact copy of the photo so children need to carefully observe details to match correctly. Children problem solve by looking at distinctive attributes that they can see on both the object & the photo. Usually they will start by color & eliminate pictures that do not share the same color. They can also look at shapes, patterns & details. They might ask themselves “which animals are brown?” or “which animals have antlers?”. Most likely they will notice more than one animal with antlers & have to look at another attribute. Recognizing these little details helps a child grow their category knowledge & learn new vocabulary! What is Included: - North American Animals 12 miniature realistic animals. (2"- 3" Long) Moose, river otter, bison, mountain lion, elk, grizzly bear, white wolf, raccoon, beaver, pronghorn buck, mountain goat & big horn ram. - 12 laminated cards professionally printed on 100# cardstock & laminated with 5 mil lamination. The cards are classroom tough. Cards are 2.6"x 2.5" Extensions: - The photo cards include names of the animals so you can extend the play with researching the species! - This activity is small enough to take with you & can be extended into pretend play or sensory bins with the mini figurines. - You can have the children sort & categorize the figurines by like traits on their own. What they are learning while having fun - Matching objects to pictures encourages one-to-one correspondence (basic math skill) & visual discrimination. - Observing & comparing small details to match correctly. Comparing involves identifying similarities & differences among objects - Children can group the figures by similar traits - this is sorting & classifying! - Children gain experience with one-dimensional print, & learning to connect real objects to print. Montessori North American Wildlife Animal Match - Miniature Animals With Matching Cards Language Materials
