All about matching

My younger son is all about matching right now. He finds similar things everywhere. Today, I discovered him looking at The Big Book of AlphaTales. He was thrilled by the story about Olive the Octopus. He then proceeded to get out these cards.


Now this is not a matching or memory game, by design.  However, after looking at and identifying all of the letters, he made it a matching game.  First, he matched it by characters in the same story or movie, as in the second picture below.  Then, with the left over cards he began to sort them into groups such as "food" and "animals".  It still didn't work out totally, but he created a category for "everything else". 

He called me over to show me and tell me what he had done. He was occupied for quite some time with this activity. And I didn't plan it or start it! Gotta love that.