Winter has officially arrived: short, cold and sometimes rainy days often force us to stay at home with our children. What do we do now? DIY ANIMAL CUBE: HOW TO MAKE IT

In these long days there is only one solution: give ample vent to inventiveness and creativity to find a new game that can keep our little one busy for an afternoon … we are too optimistic, right?

We offer you a game that can be easily made at home with a few commonly used materials: the “Animal Association Cube”.

What’s it about?

It is simply a paper dice on whose faces an animal is shown, the child will then have to bring one or more objects back to the animal that we would have printed separately.

To build the “Animal Association Cube” we will need:

– colored cardboard

– white sheets for photocopies

– paper template for the cube

– pen or pencil

– scissors

– glue stick (roll of adhesive tape)

First print a model to build the cube (you can find them easily on the internet, cut it along the contours and then fold the lines. Now just glue the tabs with the glue stick (for safety I also applied some adhesive tape to increase its stability :-D) and the die is already created!

On the internet, download the images of the animals that your child likes most and then paste them on each side of the cube. 

Now print some images that can be traced back to the subject depicted, remember that the association must be easy so that the child can independently complete it. For example, we have created the following associations:

– the sheep and a ball of wool

– the cow and the milk bottles

– the hen and the eggs

– the horse and the horseshoe

– the pig and the mud puddle

– the donkey and the cart

The associations that can be created are many, and it is also possible to print multiple objects to be traced back to a single animal, for example depicting the food, the den or the color of the coat. 

Here, now that everything is ready you can start playing: throwing the dice the child will have to recognize the animal and identify the object to which it is tied, explaining the reason.

This game is recommended for children from 4/5 years of age. Helps develop observation skills, promotes language and stimulates logical ability .

A simpler but no less fun variant (indeed) is to throw the dice and then have the child reproduce the animal’s sound, perhaps exhorting him to perform in true imitations with lots of “specific” gestures and gaits. It will be great fun for the child to turn into a ferocious lion and a minute later to become a shy and docile sheep.

In short, between the creation of the cube, the choice of animals with the elements to be associated, and the game itself we should be able to spend an afternoon at home unscathed!

It helped us, why not try it too? DIY ANIMAL CUBE: HOW TO MAKE IT