I drew the shapes on various colors of card stock sheets and cut them out. Then I traced the shapes onto a plain paper (I have plenty of these large sheets of paper from all moving and the cartons) with Sharpie. My goal was to teach them how to match, learn shapes, teach them colors, and then string two words together as in "red heart" or "yellow star".
If you don't have colorful card stock sheets but you have white card stock and colorful construction papers, you can glue the construction paper onto white card stock then trace your shapes to cut. I have a pack of Crayola construction paper mainly for all their activities.
Their attention span for any new toy or new activity is 10 minutes these days. So at least for 10 minutes every day I bring one new or old activity out for them to do and then put it away.
Couple of days back I gave them Melissa and Doug's wooden shape magnets. I love that
1) it has 25 shapes to learn, and not just 5-6 shapes that shape sorter toys usually have,
2) it has magnet so they can put the magnet shapes on their cookie sheet (I bought one for them from Dollar Tree for all their magnetic toys),
3) it has different colors
It's for ages 3+ and has shapes like curvilinear triangle and decagon and what nots that my kids now at 23 months do not understand, but there's no harm in letting them play even if it's not about serious learning at this point!
There are other DIY shapes matching activities you can make. For example, if you have a box or cardboard you can cut shapes directly out of it. That way, you have a shape cut out and a shape traced so it can act like a shape puzzle for them to match and fit in all the pieces.
Another version of shape matching game, especially for preschoolers, could be to cut your shape in half and allow the child to match the shapes together.
They folded a lot of these shapes (for this reason I chose a cardstock paper instead of regular paper) so if you have the time you might want to make felt shapes instead of paper so that their restless hands or wet hands don't ruin your paper shapes.
My kids are 23 months old and no, they could not match all the shapes on their own. But that's why I'm there for them :-)
