This activity is for Little Miss to satisfy her love of color sorting and pockets. While it does not entirely isolate one concept I find it is simple enough for her to engage with and I made it to serve multiple purposes as this is my favorite kind of DIY. The pockets allow it to be used as a fine motor activity, or as a hide away game. It can also be used as a simple sorting mat without the use of the pockets which is how we started with this material. I presented the material with identical color objects and once that was mastered I introduced the paint swatches which have a gradient. My next plan when the interest begins to wane is to cut the swatches into four separating each gradient and increasing the difficulty of the activity. This material took me under an hour to complete and was completely free using scraps of felt I had on hand. Making engaging and challenging  activities for toddlers does not need to be pricey or all that difficult!

Updated for Complexity

A great part about DIY materials is that you can usually increase the complexity of the activity with very few changes. I made this activity more complex for each of my children to make use out of with just a few tweaks. For Little Miss one I added two of each color popsicle sticks to the activity. The idea is the same, fit the sticks in the matching pockets but they take a little more precision to maneuver and the colors are not precise matches. For Mr Man who is four now I cut the swatches into four pieces of different shades of the colors. Both children are enjoying the activity and I can leave both levels of difficulty available to them on the shelf.