One Trick for Toddler Educational Activities

I don't know about you, but when I'm working with my toddler on learning games I occasionally run into one of two problems:

1. Sometimes she will be afraid to answer because she is apprehensive that she will get the answer wrong (not that I ever punish her or try to make her feel badly- just seems to happen sometimes)

2. Other times she is feeling silly and gets a kick out of purposefully giving the wrong answer.

I don't want to push the learning games too much when she's really not in the mood for them, but occasionally I persevere using a trick I've found to work amazingly well. Instead of playing the game with M, I will ask her to bring her doll over to me and I will play the game with the doll while M holds her and moves her hand to point to the correct answers.

This trick seems to completely eliminate any fear-inducing pressure to get the answer right when the game is difficult (after all, it's the dolly getting the wrong answer-- so nothing personal :-) If I suspect that the game is maybe a little too easy, I'll ask M to teach the dolly the information (or her baby sister if she's awake and nearby) which usually sobers her up and eliminates silliness.

So far, this approach has been almost entirely successful. I'm sure that the novelty will wear off sometime though; do any of you have any other tricks to suggest for helping toddlers with learning games?