Here’s another farm themed printable for your little learners – some farm animal shadow matching worksheets.
Although they may seem like just fun worksheets to pass some time, shadow matching is actually a great way for children to improve their visual discrimination skills. This is the ability to be able to tell the difference between different shapes, objects or symbols.
And this skill is an extremely important one when it comes to being able to read. When you think about it, the basis of letter recognition is being able to tell different letters apart from each other and remembering what their shapes look like.
The brilliant thing about shadow matching is that it takes away any color or pattern clues so children have to focus on the outline of the shape – just like they have to when reading letters.
There’s 10 different farm animals on the worksheets for them to match.
What Skills Can Your Little Ones Learn?
For some simple worksheets, there’s actually an awful lot of skills that can be learnt and practiced!
With these farmyard shadow matching worksheets your little ones can develop:
- Visual Discrimination skills– the ability to notice differences between objects and symbols. Your kids will have to look closely at the shapes to make the correct pairings!
- Hand-eye coordination – to be able to understand what they are seeing and get their hands to go where they want them to go
- Hand and finger strength – the ability to be able to apply enough pressure to make marks on the page and hold the pencil firmly
- Hand dominance – developing and strengthening the skill of one of their hands
- Crossing the mid-line – this is the ability to cross the imaginary line running down the center of your body – it means they wont have to switch hands if they want to make connections from one side of the page to the other
- Pencil control – holding the pencil correctly to allow for a fluid range of movement
- Speech and language skills – If you make sure you are getting them to talk about what they can see when they are matching. It’s a good chance to get them to describe what they can see. What shapes can you see? Do you know anything else that’s that shape?
- Shape and pattern – shape and pattern recognition are important early math skills.
- Patience and persistence – They’ll have to carry on even if they find it tricky at first.
How To Prepare These Farm Shadow Matching Worksheets
Firstly, you’ll need to download the sheets by clicking on the download box at the bottom of the page.
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Then, print them off.
That’s pretty much it – grab some pencils or pens and they’re ready to get matching!
I hope you and your little ones enjoy this preschool farm animal activity!
