Shoe Matching Game with It’s Shoe Time!

*Thank you Disney-Hyperion for sponsoring this post. Regardless all thoughts and opinions are my own and I only recommend the things we truly love!

I struggle to find activities that both my 3.5 year old and almost 2 year old (eek) both enjoy doing. I love it when we find things to do together that help them bond and are fun. Bonus points if we can tie in a book and make it educational, or if it involves using some artistic creativity. With the activity I’m talking about today we managed to do all of these things which makes it a total win in my book.

I knew when I first read the book It’s Shoe Time!, by Bryan Collier, exactly what we could do that both kiddos would love – a shoe matching game! I figured the kids could help me make the game, we could play the game, and read the book together for an afternoon of fun! We started by reading the book to figure out what shoes to make for the game. Both of my kids really enjoyed It’s Shoe Time! I should have known they would like it since it’s the newest book in Mo Willems’ Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! series. While this book isn’t about Elephant and Piggie, they introduce their favorite books in this series! This book is all about what it means to be a pair and has a fun, rhythmic story line and beautiful art work.

After the kids and I read the book we recruited daddy, the more artistic one in our marriage, to help make shoes based after ones in the book for our matching game. He drew the outlines, I cut them out, and then we went to the porch (where we do all art activities) for the kids to help decorate them with some glitter glue! While Maddie Grace loved this part, Tripp made a mess and was over it quickly so it ended up with Maddie Grace doing pretty much all of the decorating.

Because we used glitter glue we had to wait a little bit for them to dry and had to come back to play our game. When it was ready we got out It’s Shoe Time! again, and as we read through the book we found the different shoes and their matches. It was so much fun and added a fun interactive element to reading the book. Once we did that the kids wanted to play find the match a few more times! I would say that this activity and book are great for both toddlers and preschoolers!

Have you found any good activities to go along with reading books lately? I’d love to hear all about them below!