A cold, rainy day? Still 10 minutes to fill? Children with special educational needs? You simply cannot have enough worksheets. That’s why we offer you a file (24 pages) with animals and objects: searching, tracing, drawing, coloring, memory – all for free, of course! The exercises train attention, visual, and spatial perception.
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We hope you enjoy them!
Category: Freebies
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Animals and objects
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Open your ears!
The American Dyslexia Association offers a different educational approach to help people with dyslexia and dyscalculia. This approach is called the AFS-Method, which is a multi-sensory method to help people who have difficulties with reading, writing and/or calculating. The “F” stands for “Function” which means the different sensory perceptions you need to learn reading, writing, and calculating. One important sensory perception is the acoustic area:
- acoustic recognition: Can the child recognize different sounds?
- acoustic memory: Can the child remember what he/she has heard?
- acoustic sequencing: Can the child remember a sequence of sounds?
We offer 12 sound sequences to train acoustic perception. Access them here. The audio clips have different degrees of difficulty. The child should recognize whether the sounds are the same or different, loud or soft, how many different sounds there are, and so on. According to the age and skills of your child, you can do the exercises with closed headphones. The headphones have the advantage that the child can completely focus on the sounds. The trainer or parent then also needs headphones and a dual adapter. If you do the exercises without headphones, then the child also hears the normal daily sounds around and learns how to filter out noise even better.
We also made some worksheets to accompany these exercises, which you can download here: DOWNLOAD.
Access the audio clips here. -
Mazes
Mazes have always fascinated humanity. Think about the Cretan Labyrinth from Greek mythology. But even today, mazes are very popular. In “The Goblet of Fire,” Harry Potter has to go through a maze to win the Triwizard Tournament. Once Harry finds the way through the maze, things turn out completely different from what was expected. But that is another story you’d better read yourself.
Children are also fascinated by mazes. Therefore, mazes are perfect for training attention and perception. Here is a good way to do mazes with your children:- Give your children a maze.
- First, the children should try to find the way ONLY using their eyes.
- If that is too difficult, or if they found the way with their eyes, they should trace the way with their fingers.
- If that works well, they should trace the way with a pen. They shouldn’t touch the walls of the maze.
Important: Take care that the mazes are not too difficult, but also not too easy.
We created some worksheets with mazes in varying levels of difficulty. -
Number decomposition
We are offering simple templates to practice number decomposition. The number houses are designed entirely neutrally. Therefore, they can be used in conjunction with any material, such as tiles, beads, or counting rods. Number decomposition up to 10 is an important prerequisite for calculating beyond 10. The templates are in A4 format. Use your printer options to print multiple originals on one sheet.
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I can count
Here, we offer a fun freebie: I can count!
Many children with dyscalculia have trouble with exact counting. This booklet will help them. The children will count the dots on the ladybug and write the amount. The file is presented as a mini notebook, but you can also cut out and laminate the cards. It might be a good idea to give these booklets as homework.
The ladybug pictures are from edupic.net
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Einstein’s riddle
Einstein is said to have claimed that only 2 percent of the world can solve this puzzle. There is no evidence he wrote it, and no evidence for the 2 percent either. We will make the opposite claim: anyone who reads carefully and combines patiently can solve it. Children can too, with a little help depending on age and reading experience.
We rewrote the classic riddle in a version for children. No smoking and no alcohol, sweets and soft drinks instead. The question stays the same: who owns the fish?
Download the riddle as a free PDF
What kind of puzzle is this?
It is a logic grid puzzle, sometimes called a zebra puzzle. You are given five houses in a row, each with a different color, a different owner, a different drink, a different sweet, and a different pet. A list of clues tells you how these things relate to one another. Nothing is guessed. Every single answer can be derived from the clues, and there is exactly one solution.
How to solve it
The trick is not cleverness. It is a system. Anyone who works through it in order will get there.
- Draw the grid. Five columns for the five houses, one row for each category. Everything you learn goes into the grid, never into your head.
- Start with the clues that fix a position. Any clue that names a specific house, or the middle, or the first one on the left, is a free answer. Fill those in first.
- Then use the clues that link two things. If the person who drinks milk sits next to the green house, you may not know where yet, but you know they are neighbors.
- Cross out what is impossible. This is the part most people skip and it is where the puzzle is actually won. Every time you place something, five other options die.
- Go around again. Each new entry unlocks a clue that was useless a moment ago. Read the whole list again after every entry.
Why we put a logic puzzle on a dyslexia blog
Because of what it asks for. Reading a clue exactly as it is written, holding several conditions in mind at once, working in an ordered sequence, and staying with a task long enough to finish it are the same skills that carry reading and arithmetic. A puzzle trains them without any of it looking like schoolwork, and a child who has spent the school day being corrected gets to be the one who is right.
Read the clues aloud together if the reading itself is the hard part. The point of the exercise is the combining, not the decoding, and there is no reason a child should fail at the first step for the wrong reason.
More puzzles and printables
If this went down well, there is plenty more. Our free printable worksheets cover attention and perception training, and the spot the difference puzzles work on the same careful looking in a lighter format. The American Dyslexia Association also publishes more than 1,500 free worksheets for dyslexia and dyscalculia.
Have fun combining.
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Monster reading
Today’s freebie is monster reading puzzles. First, the children cut out the pictures. Then, they read the instructions and place the images in the correct place. This trains attention, visual and spatial perception, and accurate reading. Cutting and gluing the pictures is good for fine motor skills. An alternative is to read the instructions to the children. This trains careful listening.
We like these reading puzzles a lot, because children practice different perceptions and accurate reading or listening. Also, the children have great fun and are happy when all the pictures are in the correct place. -
Visual sequencing
Visual sequencing is the ability to organize visual impressions in a certain order. This is an important prerequisite for good writing, reading and arithmetic. Children who have difficulties with visual sequencing often exchange letters while writing or have difficulties with writing down numbers. Today we are offering a freebie containing various exercises to train visual sequencing.
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Letters recognition
Today’s freebie offers you lots and lots of worksheets to practice letters. Print out the worksheets, and if you feel like it, cut out the cards and laminate them. Children can practice all upper-case and lower-case letters. They have to recognize which letters are correct. Sometimes the letters are mirrored or standing upside down. These exercises will help your child to better recognize single letters, which helps them become a better reader.
