How can I use this resource?
Math, especially geometry, requires a solid grasp of how to use gridded paper. These simple and attractive exercises with animals drawn on a grid promote and train accurate observation and orientation in two-dimensional space.
For generations, schoolkids in Italy have been drawing little animals in
their math exercise-books when they‘re done with their assignments.
They call these mini animals Cornicette. Not only the
fast workers and early finishers decorate their notebooks with these
grid pictures. Younger kids start off by coloring in pre-printed
cornicettes with colored pencils. When they've got the hang of that,
they then copy the pictures – and sometimes invent their own!
What does this resource contain?
This resource contains 92 worksheets with grid animals at different levels of difficulty. The first row of each worksheet is pre-colored as a guide, the second row is for coloring in, and from the third row onwards the figures can be copied.
About Grid Drawings & Friedrich Fröbel
Friedrich Fröbel (1782-1852), the brilliant educator and inventor of kindergarten (1840) called drawing on a grid 'Netzzeichnen' – ‘net drawing’. He introduced this, alongside hand-pricking and folding, as an important activity in kindergarten. Fröbel considered geometric and abstract shapes to be very suitable for grid drawing. Time and again, Fröbel came up with ingeniously simple ideas with which to promote children’s manual, motor, aesthetic, and creative skills, and - as here with grid animals - to teach them certain mathematical principles along the way.
In these materials we’re reviving a Fröbel activity that’s fallen into disuse. In Fröbel’s day, children worked on slates since paper was too expensive. Today we have it much easier: All you have to do is print out the worksheets and you’re good to go!
