Shadow Puzzles

This project first originated as a desperate attempt to keep my toddler busy while waiting for our food at a restaurant. Our first shadow puzzle included silverware, sugar packets, condiment bottles, and a few toys from the diaper bag traced onto a napkin with a pen I had in my purse. Since then, it's become a fun activity that my 2-year-old loves to keep him busy when I have a few things to get done. His big brothers even love making shadow puzzles of their own for him! It's definitely a sanity-saver when you need to keep your kids occupied in public, and it only requires a few materials.

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Materials you'll need

Step-by-step tutorial

Step 1
Gather all materials. For this part, we went around the house gathering some of my toddler's favorite toys and some items from the kitchen. I tried to find things that had a definite and unique shape.

Step 2
I laid out all the items on our construction paper and traced them using a pencil and then a marker.

Step 3
Then, I removed all of the objects and used different color markers to color in each item. My toddler loved this and spent a lot of time going over each color.

Final result!
My toddler spent a lot of time matching up each object to its shadow and playing with the different items. I was amazed at how much time he spent at the table manipulating all the different things and showing me which ones they didn't match with.