Hearts Matching Game

LB loves matching games. He's been obsessed with having two of things for a long time so it makes sense that he likes to find things that match. I got the idea to use conversation hearts to create a matching game from another website and now can't seem to find the original post. But it was a great success at our house! I told LB there was a holiday coming up called Valentine's Day and it's about celebrating the people we love. He didn't care and just wanted to play the matching game so I didn't worry about the significance of the hearts and just let the whole Valentine's theme go. Fine by me. Here is what you need:

Conversation Hearts
Markers to match the colors of the hearts
Piece of paper

This is what it looked like before I showed it to LB.

I tried to put a lot of a two of the colors and then just a few of the colors so that later on in the game we could count them and some would be easier than others. 

I demonstrated with two of the hearts and then he was ready. As per usual, he was very organized about the whole thing. He started with the pink hearts and did all of those first. He kept telling me that orange was his favorite color and the pink ones were "kind of like orange." I think that is why he was obsessed with those because he decided they were orange since I failed and didn't provide orange hearts. While he was doing the orange-pink ones he instructed me to do the yellow ones because "yellow is Mommy's favorite color." It isn't. But I played along, of course. He wanted Meemaw to do the green ones because "green is her favorite color" but, sadly, she wasn't there to play. It's interesting that he accurately knows Meemaw's favorite color but not Mommy's. Sigh.

Have I mentioned how much I love his 'hard at work' face? I have a million times? Well, I love it. 

He was plugging along and then exclaimed, "Mommy! My need my black magnify!" I have no idea what made him think of his magnifying glass but I wasn't going to argue. He started examining each color under the magnifying glass. I thought it was pretty brillant.

He's so serious. He looks like a legit scientist. I guess he is. 

After we matched them all up, I had him count the number of each color. He only made it through two colors and then decided he wanted to match again. So we did. Then the next morning during breakfast he asked to "play hearts" again. So we did. That time it expanded into making letters and shapes with the hearts. It was mostly him instructing me on what to make but that's fun too.

This game was a winner. If you have a toddler, then I highly recommend it.