This Montessori learning activity focuses on matching miniature North American wildlife animals to their matching realistic photo cards. Children lay out the cards and place the miniature animal on the matching picture. This activity is small enough to take with you and can be extended into pretend play with the mini animals. Matching Skill - Visual Discrimination: This activity focuses on more advanced preschool matching. The objects are not an exact copy of the photo so children need to carefully observe details to match correctly. Children problem solve by looking at distinctive attributes that they can see on both the object and the photo. Usually they will start by color and eliminate pictures that do not share the same color. They can also look at shapes, patterns and details. They might ask themselves "which animals are brown?" or "which animals have antlers?". Most likely they will notice more than one animal with antlers and have to look at another attribute. Recognizing these little details helps a child grow their category knowledge and learn new vocabulary! What is Included: - North American Animals - - 12 miniature realistic animals. (2"- 3" Long) Moose, river otter, bison, mountain lion, elk, grizzly bear, white wolf, raccoon, beaver, pronghorn buck, mountain goat and big horn ram. - 12 laminated cards professionally printed on 100# cardstock and laminated with 5 mil lamination. The cards are classroom tough. Cards are 2.6"x 2.5" What they are learning while having fun - Matching objects to pictures encourages one-to-one correspondence (basic math skill) and visual discrimination. - Observing and comparing small details to match correctly. Comparing involves identifying similarities and differences among objects - Children can group the figures by similar traits - this is sorting and classifying! - Children gain experience with one-dimensional print, and learning to connect real objects to print.