These 18 printable kindergarten matching worksheets and games will help your students test their knowledge about numbers, upper and lowercase letters, telling time, and so much more. They're all designed to be interactive to keep your kids engaged and excited about learning!
Matching is such a great skill for kindergarten students because it requires them to make decisions for themselves.
Our students have to test out different options and figure out which one makes the most sense. As they judge each answer, they're stretching how they understand the basic skill and getting faster and faster at making those connections. This is way more effective than simple yes or no questions.
Plus, you can easily make them interactive! I like to make task cards and games out of my matching activities whenever possible to make them more fun and engaging than a simple worksheet. Your students will be way more excited about this type of activity, which will help them persevere and stay focused much longer!
Although all of these activities and resources are available in my shop, they are also all available in The Hive. It's an all-in-one teacher planner that makes it easy to schedule and manage your lessons.
It's way more than that, though!
The Hive has hundreds of evidence-based, teacher-designed educational resources, apps, lesson plans, interactive worksheets, and more. This makes it an amazingly powerful resource to simplify your planning while offering effective, meaningful activities to support your students' learning.
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15 Printable Kindergarten Matching Worksheets & Activities
Below you'll find a variety of kindergarten worksheets, task cards, and games, all tailored to helping young learners develop their reading, writing, and math skills!
Math Matching Worksheets
I especially like using matching worksheets in math because there are so many ways to incorporate them! This is a fun way to practise telling time, match numbers, and so much more. There are some really handy kindergarten math worksheets and resources below, so be sure to see which one would work for your class!
Number Match
This simple number matching activity is a great way to develop your students' number sense in a hands-on way! There are different boards for each of the numbers 1-10, and 4 matching pictures that go with each one. Students must place the correct pictures on the number boards to finish the task. I especially like to use this activity at the beginning of the year, and I really like how it practises the different number representations!
Number Matching Mats
These free printable matching worksheets are perfect for Back to School! There are different cards with a variety of objects, and students must count the units to place the picture on the right mat. They're fun, interactive, and a great way to practise number sense early on!
Here's another number matching and subitising practice activity, this time in a worksheet format. This is a Hive exclusive resource, and it is part of a Hive Maths mini unit. There are mini units for every content strand across K-2 Maths, including digital slides, task cards, worksheets, posters, lesson plans, and so much more.
Get a free 14 day trial of The Hive today!
Ice Cream Number Matching Activity
This ice cream-themed matching activity is one of my favourite independent practice activities! Each ice cream cone has a different number from 1-10, and the students need to figure out which scoops have images that match the number. It practises ten frames, finger counting, and dice, which are all a big part of maths in kindergarten and 1st grade!
Ten Frame Bingo
This ten frame bingo isn't exactly a worksheet, but it's such a fun matching game! Instead of just matching numbers, the teacher (or game leader) shows a ten frame, and the students must find the corresponding number on their game board. This will help them make a clear connection between ten frames and numeral form really quickly and can be really powerful!
This version covers numbers 1-20 and is a great activity for both the whole class and small groups.
Colour Matching Activity
Help your students learn the different colours by sorting colourful images onto different mats! This is especially great for early learners, like preschool or kindergarten students, who are still developing their colour recognition skills.
This colour cut and paste activity is totally free!
What's the Time?
I have a whole set of time-matching activities to practise telling time to the hour, half-hour, and quarter. This skill tends to be quite tricky for young kids - especially in this digital world - so your kids will benefit from all the practice they can get! Plus, the different worksheets can either be printed out to use right away or place in write and wipe mats to turn into stations.
Find more Printable Telling Time Worksheets for Kindergarten right here.
Reading & Phonics Matching Worksheets
The following worksheets all focus on crucial reading and phonics skills, from matching letter cases, CVC words, finding rhymes, and more! This is just the start, and there are many more of these literacy matching activities in The Hive. Sign up for a free 14 day trial today to see them all!
Matching Letters
We often spend a lot of time in kindergarten teaching our students about uppercase and lowercase letters! With so many different letters, this can take quite some time. Fortunately, I've designed several different types of Alphabet Matching Worksheets, including these helpful options:
- Letter Case Matching Rainbows (great task cards for individuals or partners!)
- Alphabet Match Worksheets to practise 9 letters at a time.
- Uppercase and Lowercase Matching to practise all 26 letters at once!
- Alphabet Match Task Cards to use as a literacy rotation
You can even scaffold these activities together to help guide your student through the learning process.
Syllable Rainbows
Phonological awareness skills are absolutely essential to learning how to read and write. It's incredibly important to teach your students about syllables, even if that feels too complicated for young kids! Intentionally and explicitly teaching syllables can really make it so much easier for your students to break apart and blend sounds together.
Pair your lessons about syllables with these syllable rainbows to practise identifying the number of syllables in a word. They're especially perfect for literacy centers!
Rhyme Rainbows
These rhyme rainbows are an easy, colourful way for young children to practise listening to the sounds in words. This is a vital pre-reading skill that will help them tremendously when they start to decode and encode words in their early reading and writing activities.
There are over a dozen different pairs of cards, which all feature two images with rhyming names. They could easily turn this into a game like Goldfish or Concentration or keep it simple and focus on matching!
CVC Word Rainbows
These CVC Word rainbow matching cards are similar to the activities above, but this time students must decode the CVC words and match with the decodable picture.
Decodable Sentences
There are several options for decodable sentences, which scale in complexity. Some require students to read and match the sentences, while others take it a step further and ask them to write the sentences, too. You'll find several variations on this based on vowel sounds, digraphs, and other unusual letter combinations. They're a great way to practise reading and these specific phonics skills at the same time!
You can find each set of worksheets on The Hive or look for exactly what you need right here:
- Decodable CVC Words Sentence Matching (freebie!)
- Long Vowel A Decodable Sentences (freebie!)
Looking for more?
As a former kindergarten teacher, this grade is a particular favourite of mine. I hope these kindergarten matching worksheets helped you find the perfect way to reinforce a skill or plan your rotation activities!
There are many more resources for teaching kindergarten in my shop and blog, so be sure to check out some of the posts below. Don't forget to check out The Hive for even more resources, tips, and plans!
More Kindergarten Resources
- Fun Cut and Paste Worksheets for Kindergarteners
- Best Printable Writing Numbers Worksheets for Kindergarten
- Preparing for Kindergarten Worksheets
- Best Academic and Social Goals for Kindergarten
