Object to Picture Matching

In Montessori classrooms and homeschool classes, 3 Part Cards and picture cards are used in a variety of ways to help teach vocabulary, word recognition and even pre-reading skills. These kinds of cards and the activities that go along with 3 Part Cards help to provide different ways for the child to internalize the information they are learning.

While Little L isn’t showing lots of interest in 3 Part Cards yet, she does love matching pictures and objects! So in this lesson,  she is only using the control card containing both the object and name of the object to match the farm animal with its figurine.

This is a perfect activity for Toddler age children. They love objects of any kind and naturally gravitate towards them.

When we present objects, we naturally teach vocabulary by saying the name of the object and maybe the sound or noise an object makes or we can point out colors and shapes. Then we can add picture cards and show our child how to match the object to the matching picture card.

This example of Little L matching the farm animals to the cards was exceptionally fun to watch because instead of using the farm animal figurines that I had set out for her (the ones that matched the cards), she grabbed animals that were different colors than the animals on the  picture cards. I didn’t correct her.  I wanted to see how she would figure this out. So here is what happened………….

The animal figurines Little L decided to use for this activity.

Once she placed the pig (which was the same color as the card), she began to focus on the horse and the cow. Both of these objects were different colors than the horse and cow on the card, so I could see Little L trying to figure out or discriminate their differences in color.  Her wheels were spinning! :)

In the end, she realized that although the cow in the picture card was black and the cow object was brown, she finally determined that it was still a cow. Such a simple yet amazing moment to witness!

Do you use 3 Part Cards or picture cards with your children?