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I SPY picture mats

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Looking for a fun vocabulary builder for young learners? Try these I SPY picture mats!

On a recent trip to the field museum, my three-year-old looked through the glass at a rhinoceros.

“Is that a unicorn?” he asked.

Later, when looking at a display of pumpkin seeds, a zucchini, and pumpkin pie, my husband asked him what was behind the glass.

“Peanuts, a cucumber, and pizza!”

My husband looked at me and noted, “I think we need to work on his vocabulary.”

The truth is that my older kids had stronger vocabulary at this age.

I read to them more, played with them more, and generally paid them more attention.

I love my little boy to pieces, but these days there’s less of me to go around. 

The trip to the museum was a bit of wake up call. I need to be more proactive with my youngest.

Watch the video below to see what I created. Zip to the end of the blog post to download the freebie!

 

 

 

Grow vocabulary with I SPY picture mats

I created a set of six picture mats:

  • Vegetables 1
  • Vegetables 2
  • Fruit 1
  • Fruit 2
  • Farm Animals
  • Pets

To play, I simply name the objects on the page (or give a clue to help my preschooler find them), and my little guy covers the objects with poker chips.

He actually asks for these … and his vocabulary is already growing!

You can use the I SPY mats however you’d like. I list four levels of play at the bottom of each mat. Each level gets progressively harder.

For example, on the I Spy Vegetables mat, the levels look like this:

Level 1 – Have your learner cover vegetables by their color.
Level 2 – Have your learner cover vegetables as you name them.
Level 3 – Give clues that relate to how we eat the vegetables. (Example: I spy a vegetable that we can make into a pie.)
Level 4 – Give clues that relate to the plants themselves. (Example: Which vegetable is the seed of a plant?)

Another way to play

My Three’s favorite way to play is to simply take turns naming the objects and covering them. It sounds like this:

My Three: “I spy corn.”
Me: “I spy a potato.”
My Three: “I spy celery.”
etc.

Use these mats with …

  • Toddlers and preschoolers
  • English language learners
  • children and adults in speech therapy

Get your free I Spy picture mats!

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

Check out our bundle of vocabulary picture cards!

500 Vocabulary Picture Cards

$18.00

These cards are ideal for vocabulary building with children ages 3-8, English language learners, students in speech therapy, and children with autism or other special learning needs.

Buy Now

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Reader Interactions

31 Comments

  1. Carolina

    Your resources are always so engaging and age-appropriate. I loved this activity, which encourage so much more than just building vocabulary. Fine motors, and turn taking.
    Many thanks for all your work!

    Reply to this comment

  2. Laura Jobman

    I have a reluctant learner grandson. Aged 5. Starting Kd in the fall 2019. Do you have themed units centered on The Avengers?? He gets excited about them! I’ve done duplo activities with him based on letter and number recognition. He loves those. But I need to branch out to other areas of interests. He doesn’t like dinosaurs. He is very specific. Action characters…..The Avengers!

    Reply to this comment

  3. Trisha Rogers

    I need your vocabulary worksheet that has 4 rectangles with a circle right in the middle where the 4 corners meet. There is a place on the bottom for a sentence. I make a copy once but cant find it again. Please!!

    Reply to this comment

  4. Helen

    Hi. I work with children that have speech and language difficulties and I would really love to use these I spy mats with them. But eveytime I click on the link no contents comes up just a blank screen. Please can you help me!

    Reply to this comment

    • Kate Dowling

      Hi Helen!

      This is Kate, Anna’s assistant. I tried this in my usual browser, Firefox, and it took a long time to load (maybe 1-2 minutes). I also tried it in Google Chrome (Anna’s favorite browser), and it loaded in seconds, although still not instantly. So the link works, but this file takes a bit longer than most others. Please try it in Google Chrome for best results. Google Chrome is free to download if you don’t already have it on your computer.

      Reply to this comment

  6. Sara

    Great activity. Would you be able to create similar I SPY mats for the following categories – Transportation, food items, locations, clothing, items used in daily living, and classroom items? This will be really helpful for early language learners. Thank you.

    Reply to this comment

  9. Debbie Sanders

    Once again you are sharing some great materials with us! I will be using these I Spy cards with my PreK ELL students. You have made them a snap to use by providing questions with different levels of difficulty. We don’t even have to create them. Thank you for using photographs so the pictures are the best examples of the animals and foods.

    Reply to this comment

  10. Sarah Fenner

    I just LOVED that video!! So helpful to hear how you dealt with wrong answers from your son! He’s super cute! Thanks so much for sharing all of these awesome things with us!!

    Reply to this comment

  12. Catherine Morrison

    Brilliant! Thank you Anna. I’ll be using these with my ESL learners, too. They need so much vocabulary that most of my time with them, initially at least, is spent building basic vocabulary knowledge. All your photo packs and language activities are SO useful. Can’t thank you enough! I can only echo the sentiments expressed by Kennesha above.

    Reply to this comment

  13. Kennesha Bell

    That video gave me life this morning. He was adamant about a “cow gives us milk” he couldn’t get over that. Iol!! This will be awesome for my ESL students. Finding your blog and all these amazing freebies is a God’s sent. I taught K, 1st and 5th grades in America for 4 years after being a Director at an early learning center for 4 years and then taught Junior college (prospective early years teachers trying to get a degree) for 1 year and coached teachers for grades K-3 for 1 year. Just when I thought I knew everything I moved overseas to teach in Qatar. I’ve been here for 3 years now teaching grade 1 and let me tell you, there is nothing like teaching English as a second language. It is extremely frustrating some days. I have definitely learned to be more patient. But your products have helped me become better. I said I wasn’t buying anything else this year for teaching, so I will try the freebie out first to help build vocabulary but something tells me, I’ll be breaking down again and purchasing these soon. These kids could really use some vocab building.

    Next year, I will be leaving the classroom again to be the only reading specialist here and I know I will be on your blog nonstop. I say all of this to say: Thank you, you are reaching teachers far away and helping. The fact that so much stuff is free is fantastic. Please keep it up.

    Reply to this comment

    • Anna G

      Thank you so much for your kind words, Kennesha, and I’m so glad you could use this freebie! I can’t imagine teaching overseas – I know it takes a very special and strong person. Blessings on your work!

      Reply to this comment

  14. Leslie @ A Family of Readers

    Vocabulary is such an important part of success in Language Arts overall…reading, writing, speaking and listening. As a special education teacher to less advantaged kids, I’ve been dismayed at times by the impact poor vocabulary has on their ability to keep up in the regular classroom. I love this idea for building vocabulary during their pull-out time with me. I think I might write the names of the objects below the pictures so I can include some work with initial sound and counting syllables. Thank you!

    Reply to this comment

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