Frugal gift # 5 ~ Matching game

Here is something that is extremely cheap to make and doesn't require much skill or abilities and doesn't take to much time but can provide a whole lot of fun! I have enjoyed matching (or memory) games for a long time. I think it is great for your brain!
This particular game we made for my nieces who are learning about their letters. I used old milk jug caps for the playing pieces.(We have to take them off when we recycle and I hated to throw all that good potential craft material away ~we don't get them anymore though as I now buy our milk from the dairy and reuse our jars.) We made little paper circles to fit inside them, decorated them with the upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet and with a sticker, little picture that we cut out of an old school book or with a little drawing and then glued them into the inside of the cap. We also used different colors, trying to find colors that started with the particular letter of the alphabet. This was great for using up odd scraps of paper from junk mail and the like.
Here are Aaron and Jonathan testing the game out before we send it off in the mail.

We have a matching game too, one that was given to Aaron that was store bought. We have had a lot of fun with it. Aaron gets super excited when a match is found. Jonathan is great at remembering where things are. I particularly like this game as I fairly consistently beat Ken at it!

Another way you could make it is with metal juice lids. That is what we used growing up. We made a set with old wallpaper scraps glued in and we would match the colors and patterns. I have also made them before with just stickers on the inside. Another thing I have done is to write one half of a memory verse on one side and the other half on the other to try to aid memorizing. Homemade memory games work just as well as ones from the store. I hope you have fun with this!