DIY: A Recycled-Materials Matching Game

Color/pattern recognition? Check! Memory skills? Check! Additional stuff for your kids to fling onto the floor? Definitely a check! Make a matching game with your kids out of recycled materials, and you can have all that and more for the price of nothing.

STEP 1: Gather matching materials. For my matches, I used leftover paint chips from our playroom makeover (I am totally not the only one with leftover paint chips!). I cut each paint chip into two identical pairs, and used decorative scissors to cut away any writing–this will be a color matching game. For other kinds of matching games, you could make color/color word pairs, pairs of family or friends from surplus photos, alphabet pairs using cut-outs from magazines, color pairs made from painting or coloring on used typing paper, etc.

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STEP 2: Because my paint chips are different shapes and sizes and have words on their other sides, I need to back them. Find an appropriate template that will be larger than the largest of your matching pairs, and cut an identical backing for each of your matching pairs. I made my backing double-sided so that the matching pairs have a pattern behind them, too–for the identical flip sides, all of which will be facing up when the game begins, I used new scrapbook paper, all the same pattern. Behind the actual matching pairs, I cut my circles from an old encyclopedia–these don’t have to be identical, just pretty.

STEP 3: Assemble your game pieces with a glue stick–a double-sided backing, and the actual matching game piece centered on one side. Don’t get too worked up about the glue; your pieces only have to stay glued together through the next step.

STEP 4: Laminate your game pieces using either a commerical or at-home laminating machine, self-stick laminating pages, or contact paper. Contact paper is the cheapest, but it’s also the least transparent.

STEP 5: Play, and play, and play, and…

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