Printable Opposites Worksheets
These opposites worksheets for kindergarten use pictures, not words: a child draws a line from day to night, hot to cold, open to closed and awake to asleep. Each printable sheet has an answer key.
Targeted Practice by Skill
About Opposites
What this skill is
Opposites are pairs of words that mean as different as possible, like wet and dry or clean and dirty. Matching pictures of opposites lets a child think about the idea before they can read the words, and it gives them language for describing the world.
When children learn it
Opposites come up all through preschool and kindergarten. They support the kindergarten language standard on understanding verbs and adjectives by relating them to their opposites (Common Core L.K.5b).
Teaching Tips
- Say both words out loud for every line your child draws: "This dog is wet, this dog is dry."
- Play "say the opposite" in the car or at bedtime. You say up, they say down; you say open, they say closed.
Common Mistakes
- Matching two pictures that simply go together instead of opposites, like the sun with a sunny day rather than with the moon.
- Knowing the pair but not the words for it. A child may match a wet dog to a dry dog and still call them both a dog.