· 2 min read · Ages 3–7 · Pre-K through Grade 1
Draw a line picture matching sheets, from twins to first letters
Around three, a child can look at two pictures of a duck and not be sure they are the same duck. Learning to look carefully is a skill.
There is a stage, somewhere around three, where a child can look at two pictures of a duck and not be sure they are the same duck. One sits a little lower on the page, or the colors are not quite what they expected. Learning to look carefully is a skill, and a draw-a-line sheet is where I first watched my son practice it.
What the sheet looks like
The picture matching sheet puts pictures down the left side and their matches shuffled down the right, with a dot by each one to join with a pencil. Same picture is the simplest mode: find the twin. Picture to word prints the name on the right (cat, apple, star), and picture to first letter prints just the initial. You choose four, five, six or eight pairs, so the lines can be few and far apart for a small child or a tangle for an older one, and an answer key is optional.
Why it works
- Same picture is visual discrimination, the thing a child uses later to tell b from d. It is worth doing before letters, not after.
- Picture to word gives an early reader a check. If the picture is a cat and the word is three letters starting with c, the match confirms what they read.
- Drawing the line left to right rehearses the direction of print, and lines that cross each other are a small test of pencil control.
Who it suits
Same picture with four pairs is a three-year-old's sheet. Picture to first letter suits late Pre-K and kindergarten, and picture to word works for a kindergartner or first grader starting to read short words. The vocabulary is small and simple, so this is not a reading sheet for anyone past six. For a child who has outgrown it, the number representations sheet carries the same draw-a-line format into numerals, dots and ten frames.
Eight pairs makes a busy page. Save it for when four has become boring.