Symmetry Picture Tracing: Trace the Other Half

At the top of the page a big butterfly spreads across an open book, its body lying along the book's spine. Below the book stand three arched frames, holding an owl, a trophy and a teddy bear. In every picture the left half is drawn in solid lines and the right half in dashes, and a thin line down the middle marks where the halves meet. Each picture is a drawing whose two halves really do match, measured line by line before it was chosen.

Finishing the other half asks the child to look at one side and make the other side the same, the first step towards understanding symmetry. The dashed half is the picture's own right side, so when the tracing is done both halves match exactly. Talk about it while tracing: does the butterfly's right wing look like its left wing? Has the owl got two eyes and two wings? Checking the finished picture against the solid half shows the child that a mirror line divides a picture into two parts that fit together.

This printable PDF suits first grade and children who enjoy a little challenge in their tracing. It works well before a lesson on mirror images or as a follow-up to folding paper butterflies. For a page where only small parts are missing, try the finish-the-picture shelf. Picture tracing follows the outline of whole pictures; abstract line practice, step-by-step drawing and numbered dot-to-dot have their own pages.