Fruits & Vegetable Match - Healthy Food with Matching Cards - 2 Part Cards. Montessori learning toy, language materials - Large Food Objects

This Montessori learning activity focuses on matching the large fruit and veggie replicas to their matching realistic photo cards. Children lay out the cards and place the foam foods on the matching picture.

Foods include:  Apple, banana, grapes, watermelon, strawberry, pumpkin, eggplant, corn, carrot, and peas.  Perfect healthy food group learning toy.

What is Included:
- 10 Large food foam stress balls (1.25" to 3.75")  Non-toxic and BPA free.

- 10 laminated cards professionally printed on 100# cardstock and laminated with 5 mil lamination. The cards are classroom tough.  Cards are 2.6"x 2.5".

• Grapes - 3.75" x 2.5"
• Banana - 4.5" x 1"
• Strawberry - 2.75" x 2.25"
• Watermelon - 3.5" x 2"
• Apple - 2.5" x 2.25"
• Carrot - 3.75" x 1.75"
• Eggplant - 3.75" x 2"
• Corn - 3.75" x 2"
• Peas - 3.75" x 2"
• Pumpkin - 2" x 2"
• Black Vinyl Bag - 8.5" x 6"

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 and the photo. Usually, they will start by color and eliminate pictures that do not share the same color. They can also look at shapes, patterns, and details. They might ask themselves "what food is orange?".   Most likely they will notice more than one orange food and have to look at another attribute such as shape. Recognizing these little details helps a child grow their category knowledge and learn new vocabulary!

Extensions:
- The photo cards include names of the foods so you can extend the play with researching the item!
- This activity can be extended into pretend play or sensory bins with the mini figurines.
- You can have the children sort and 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) and visual discrimination.
- Observing and comparing small details to match correctly. Comparing involves identifying similarities and differences among objects
- Children can group the figures by similar traits - this is sorting and classifying!
- Children gain experience with one-dimensional print, and learning to connect real objects to print.

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These bags contain small parts that may not be appropriate for children under the age of 3. Adult supervision is required.