What Changed? Tick the Words

Next to the two farm pictures stands a column of six words: hummingbird, butterfly, hay, sun, cloud, barn. Three things are different in the bottom picture, and after circling them the child ticks the words of the things that changed. The words are the real vocabulary of the picture, and three of the six are decoys that name things which stayed the same. On this grade-1 sheet, written for the find-the-differences family, the reading load is six nouns and nothing more.

Matching a change to its word is the bridge from looking to language. A child who has found that the sun is gone must then decide that the word for it is sun, not cloud. The page never offers two words for one drawing, so each tick has one right answer: where a picture holds both a generic bird and a named one, only the specific word is listed. Decoy words make the ticking a decision rather than a habit.

The answer key rings the three changes and ticks the three right words; the tap screen asks the child to tap the changes and then tap the words. Its sibling, Write What Is Different, moves the same idea into sentences for second graders. These pages compare two pictures of one scene; mirror drawing, colouring by number and odd-one-out puzzles have their own pages.