These cheap and easy DIY crabs can be used for teaching your little one colours, copying patterns or even learning simple sequencing which leads on to early coding knowledge.
Suitable for: 1 year +
Set up: 30 minutes
Resources
- Cardboard
- Scissors
- Pencil
- Pens of various colours.
- Ruler
The Set Up
Cut the cardboard into rough 10cm x 10cm squares. On each square use a pencil to draw a crab. Use a black pen to trace the outline of the crab and then colour each crab in, I did two of each colour.
Playing With The Activity
Start of simple and make the game trickier, For Ayla I gave her one of each coloured crab and then layed out a pattern with the rest for her to match my pattern. She found this really easy so I made a simple sequence that went; Red crab, Blue Crab, Red Crab. Ayla then needed to finish the sequence with a Blue crab. She needed a little bit of support with this next step but she did eventually find the blue crab!
We spoke about the different coloured crabs we could see in the pattern and what crabs were the same colour.
Activities like this are great for;
Building children’s knowledge of patterns and sequences
Promoting critical thinking skills as they work out how to continue the pattern