Many and One: Trace the Word for a Single Fruit

This Kindergarten singular-plural page runs the rule backwards. Three rows of fruits fill the sheet, and on the right of each row the plural is already there: two or three figs, pears or oranges tipped at slight angles, with figs, pears and oranges printed underneath in solid teal beside a badge showing 2 or 3. On the left sits one single fruit with a badge reading 1, and beneath it the singular in dashed letters to trace and an empty line to write it on. Two pills at the top of the page, 1 one and 2 3 many, hold the rule in view.

Taking the s off is not automatic just because putting it on has been learned. Children who reliably say two pears will still write pears under a single fruit, because the plural is the form they have been practising, and this page catches that by making the plural the thing on offer and the singular the thing to produce. Every pair here is a regular -s plural, so the change is one letter and it is visible that only the end of the word moves. What a teacher is looking for is the moment the pencil stops one letter early on the empty line without a glance back at the dashed model.

Print the PDF free and ask for both words aloud before writing: three figs, one fig. Three rows keeps this to a five-minute slot, and it belongs after the forwards direction rather than before it. Singular and plural for kindergarten is that forwards page, where the single fruit is given and the plural traced. Write the word for one takes the dashed letters away entirely and leaves the plural as the only model on the sheet.