Free Printable Shadow Matching Worksheets
Six worksheets using real photographs rather than clip art, so every shadow is the true outline of the thing itself. Animals, food and vehicles. Download the PDF or print straight from the page.
Farm Animals Shadow Matching
Six farm animals and six shadows. Draw a line from each animal to its shadow.
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Wild Animals Shadow Matching
Six wild animals and six shadows. Draw a line from each animal to its shadow.
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Pets Shadow Matching
Four pets and four shadows. Draw a line from each animal to its shadow.
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Water Animals Shadow Matching
Five water animals and five shadows. Draw a line from each animal to its shadow.
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Fruit and Vegetable Shadow Matching
Six fruits and vegetables and six shadows. Draw a line from each one to its shadow.
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Vehicles Shadow Matching
Six vehicles and six shadows. Draw a line from each vehicle to its shadow.
Get the worksheet →Why the shadows actually match
On most shadow matching worksheets the silhouette is drawn separately from the picture, so the two shapes never quite line up and a child who is looking carefully gets punished for it. Here every shadow is the same photograph with the colour removed, which means the outline is identical down to the last whisker.
Printing notes
- All sheets are one page, portrait, and print fine on both A4 and US Letter.
- Black and white is fine and saves ink. The shadows are already black, and the photographs stay clear in greyscale.
- If you want to reuse a sheet, print it once and slide it into a plastic wallet: dry-wipe pens work well and the same sheet lasts a term.
- Cutting the sheet into cards turns it into a table-top matching activity, which is easier for a child who finds pencil work tiring.
Which sheet to start with
Start with Pets, which has only four pairs and the animals a child is most likely to have met. Wild Animals is next easiest despite having six, because every silhouette has one unmistakable feature. Farm Animals is harder, since the cow, horse and sheep share a similar body shape.
Once animals are easy, move off them. Fruit and Vegetables forces the child to tell apart shapes that are all roughly round, and Vehicles is the real step up: a bicycle silhouette is mostly holes, so it cannot be matched on overall blob shape at all.
If holding a pencil is the obstacle rather than the matching itself, the online version uses the same photographs and needs only a tap.