Visual Spatial Brain Training for Preschoolers

I made up this game which L and E (3 years old) have been enjoying all week to test their visual / spatial reasoning skills.  I saw another parent in a forum talk about a $300 (!) game they were going to purchase for Christmas to teach their toddler how to take IQ Tests!  When I checked out the website, I saw a sample of the questions, and I thought "I could totally do that myself".  So I did.  Here's how it works..

It took me about 15 minutes to come up with approximately 30 cards showing 4 figures each, one of which doesn't belong with the rest (the girls enjoyed drawing their own puzzles on the index cards while I put these together).  The photos I included here are just a sampling of the ideas I came up with for the cards.  Some are easier than others (where my kids can just visually see that something is different), and others are trickier (how many lines is the figure made out of?  Curved vs. straight lines.  Corners vs. edges of a shape.  Matching a number to the sides of a figure.  Etc.. etc..)

I called this game "No Zoo for You" which is just a silly fun thing to say when you find the picture that doesn't belong (I got this from a book on Phonemic Awareness for a game where kids find the objects that starts with a different letter than the rest).  Here's how to play..

Take out clothespins (or tokens) and place the index cards face down on the table.  Each child turns over a card for her turn and finds the figure that is different.  Then she yells "No Zoo for You!" as she puts a clothespin (or token) on the offending figure.  It's really simple, but my kids loved it and asked for it last week (I need to make some more cards!).  We keep the cards in an index card filing box for future use.