Brendan and I played a few matching games today. I had bought him this picture pairs game yesterday:

I took out about 9 pairs of very familiar objects and laid them out on the floor. If I gave Bren a picture of one of them, he could easily match them up either by placing one on top of the other or by picking up the correct matching picture. I knew he had this skill because he demonstrated it with the car puzzle I made him a couple weeks ago. But when I hid the 2nd set and asked him to bring me, say, the banana he didn’t. He would come over and squat by me and look to the correct picture but he didn’t pick it up or give it to me. I don’t know if he was just not cooperating or he didn’t understand to give it to me part. I was a bit bummed and he lost interest so I put it away.
I got out a muffin tin and some fruit snacks and separated them by color in different compartments. I set it in front of him and he did put a few colors in the correct spot but the lure of the fruit snacks was too great- he’d snag one for his mouth every chance he got. LOL.
So I did the same thing but with cereal consisting of different colored balls. I got him to put a red ball in the red ball spot, etc. So I took it a step further and “accidently” dropped a purple ball into the red section. “Uh oh! Fix it Brendan” and I’d jiggle the offending ball with a finger. It took awhile but he finally would take the intruder out of the wrong pile and place it in the correct spot. Success! So he learned a bit of something mathematical today.