Winter Animals Shadow Matching Activity for Preschoolers
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This Winter Shadow Matching Activity will help preschoolers develop their visual discrimination further.
Visual discrimination is the ability to notice the differences and similarities between objects or symbols and their shapes, textures, form, orientation, size, and colors.
Children must develop this ability or skill to be able to:
- Identify and differentiate letters and numbers.
- Learn how to read and write.
- Understand and interpret the world around them.
- Function properly at school and home.
- Do activities that require visual acuity, such as puzzles, sorting, and mazes.
Winter Shadow Matching
This FREE Winter Shadow Matching activity looks simple but will help your children develop visual discrimination. It requires very little prep time and can be used in different ways, depending on your children’s skill level.
This printable comes with three mats with 5, 4, and 3 shadow squares, respectively: 12 animal shadow squares, 12 animal picture squares, 12 animal word squares, and three mats without squares.
How to Prepare and Use the Activity
This activity must be durable and strong, because the children will manipulate them in any way, and you want it to last a long time.
To get the activity ready, you only need these materials:
- FREE Animals Shadow Match printable (found at the end of this post).
- Printer.
- Scissors.
- Laminator.
- Laminator pouches.
- White cardstock.
Begin by printing all the pages using white cardstock. Then, cut out and laminate the shadows, pictures, and word squares to protect them and make them last longer. You can store the activity in a binder or a Zip-lock bag to protect it and use it year after year.
Depending on your children’s skill set, there are several different ways you could use these matching activities, for example:
- You can give your child one or more mats with shadow squares and animal picture squares to match, placing the picture squares on top of the correct shadows.
- The child can place the pictures in the shadows and then in the squares with the animal’s name.
- He or she can use the mats without squares as a base to match the shadows and picture squares.
- Or the child can use the blank mats to match all the shadows, pictures, and names.
If a child struggles to do any of the suggested activities, try asking him or her to look at only one image at a time, then another, and so on. As the child’s skills improve, you can offer a more complex activity.
Books About Winter Animals
You know that I’m always talking about the importance of reading books to your children. It is something that you should never stop doing. Reading aloud has many benefits for your children. Just to mention one, this activity will increase your children’s vocabulary.
There are so many good books out there that it will be impossible to mention all of them in one post. Because of that, I want to give you just some good titles you can use. You can find all these books at your local library, a used books store, and, of course, on Amazon. To make adding them to your collection easier, click on the titles, which will take you directly to my affiliate links.
- What’s a Season: Winter by Kelly Grettlel. With colorful, rhythmic text, this book will show your kiddos what makes winter magical and fun.
- Curious About Snow by Gina Shaw. With beautiful snowflake photos, this book looks at the science behind snow, the history of record-setting blizzards and snowstorms, and how people have fun in the snow!
- The Biggest Snowman Ever by Steven Kroll is a fun story about Clayton and Desmond’s collaboration to build the biggest snowman ever for the town’s contest.
- Ten Sparkly Snowflakes by Tiger Tales. A cut math book that used woodland animals to show children how the number of snowflakes decreases from 10 to 1 with each turn of the page.
- Animals in Winter by Henrietta Bancroft. This book is a little advanced for preschoolers, but it can help you introduce your kids to basic science ideas during discussions about the seasons and animals.
- Goodbye Autumn, Hello Winter by Kenard Pak. A brother and sister will take children on a journey as they explore nature and stroll through their twinkling town, greeting all the signs of the coming winter.
Pin It For Later
If you are in a rush and don’t have time to read the post and download the printable but want to save it for later, pin it to one of your Pinterest boards and return to it later.
Then check my other posts for Winter and Christmas below. They all have free printables that you can add to your collection.
I hope this is a beautiful season for you, your family, and your preschoolers. I also hope that this activity makes your lesson planning a little easier and helps your children develop those necessary visual discrimination skills a little further.
Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.
Love,
Also, please let me know if this activity works for you, and if you would like to see an article or a printable about how to make something specific, please let me know, and I will try my best to create it for you. My goal is to help you in any way I can, and I don’t like anything better than to post something that you might find useful.
