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Fun Grids – Free Printable Grids and Activities for Kids

Posted on January 15, 2015 7 Comments

These free printable grids are a great tool for art, maths, fine motor and even language play and exploration!

There are so many fun and easy way to use these grid printables for hands-on learning with your kids, both in the classroom and at home.

Fun Grids! - free printable grids for art, maths, fine motor, and language play and learning!

This fun grids activity started out as a simple idea for drawing, and soon became something totally different!

In the beginning we made a printable grid for drawing some zentangles and patterns. My kids loved these and we had fun filling in squares together, googling to find new ideas, and trying out new patterns and zentangles. But as I sat drawing I wondered what else we could do with a simple printable grid…

Suddenly I found myself creating grids in several different sizes, along with some numbers, symbols and squares to match.

Fun Grid Activities for Kids

A simple printed grid can be used in so many ways for hands-on learning. They are great for lots of art activities, perfect for fine motor play, you can even use them for language and literacy play, and of course, they are perfect for maths activities.

They are a great open-ended tool that can be used for any age, either at home for some fun activities, or in the classroom.

There are just so many ways to use these fun printable grids!

Art Grid Activities

We started this grid project with the idea of drawing zentangles but we quickly came up with lots of other arty ways to use the grids.

Fun Grids! - free printable grids for play and learning. Lots of ideas for art and creativity.

Here are some arty ideas for the grids:

  • Fill each square with a zentangle, pattern or tiny drawing.
  • Use a ruler to draw lines across the grids and make interesting patterns to colour in.
  • Use the small grid to make Minecraft inspired pixel/block drawings.
  • Draw a gallery of blank faces on the largest grid as a fun drawing prompt.
  • Use the small grid to design perler bead patterns.
  • Use the small grid to do some grid art.
  • Use the grid to draw a map, add in some maths fun by adding co-ordinates down each side and mark where the hidden tressures are
  • Use the grid as the starting point for designing your own board game.

Maths Grid Activities

The printable grids are perfect for lots of great maths activities and hands-on number play. We added printable squares to use as counters, as well as numbers and maths symbols to add even more fun to a math grid activity.

Fun Grids! - free printable grids for art, maths, fine motor, and language play and learning!

Here are some math grid idea for preschoolers:

  • For number recognition and basic counting skills add the numbers along the top of the grid then use counters, or loose parts (we used little erasers) and place the correct number of items under each number.
  • Use the grids to see up a patterning activity. Use loose parts or the printables squares to make a repeating pattern for your child to continue.

Here are some maths grid ideas for older kids:

  • Practice basic sums using the numbers, symbols and counters or coloured squares – addition, subtraction and multiplication.
  • Use each square to work on basic fractions, either by drawing or using wooden tiles (ours came from Spielgaben)
  • Add a numbers down one side of the grid and letters down the other for a game of battle ships! Start out with the largest grid for an easy game then try the smallest.
  • Use the grids for some simple graphing. Try graphing favourite colours of your class, or the colours of your soft toy collection.
  • Use the grids to help write out maths problems.

Fine Motor Grid Activities

We love loose parts play and adding a selection of counters and bits and pieces to the grid make for great fine motor play and lots of eye-hand co-ordination practice.

Fun Grids! - free printable grids for art, maths, fine motor, and language play and learning!

Here are some ideas for using the grids for fine motor play:

  • Use the grids as a base for loose parts play, set out items in patterns across the grid.
  • Use the grids as a base for pattern blocks
  • See how many items you can stack on top of one another on one square of the grid!
  • Use the grids with playdough, squish a ball of dough onto each square, or roll out the dough and cut shapes to fit on each square.

Language Grid Activities

By a happy coincidence our Scrabble Junior letter tiles also fit perfectly onto the third grid, but there are lots of other ways you could use the printable grids for language learning.

Fun Grids! - free printable grids for art, maths, fine motor, and language play and learning!

Here are some ideas for using grids for language learning:

  • Use scrabble letters to math words written on the grid.
  • Match lower case to upper case letters. You could write the uppercase letters on the grid, or use word cards.
  • Use the grids to make your own word search activity.
  • Write a letter in each square of the grid then cut them up to make rearrangeable words or a fun ‘ransom note’!

Download the Free Printable Grids Set.

The set of free printable grids for kids comes as an A4 sized pdf file. There are four different sized grids, plus a page of numbers, symbols and simple square counters which fit the grid on the third page. You’ll probably want to print the number and counters page out twice to have lots of pieces to play with.

Fun Grids! - free printable grids for art, maths, fine motor, and language play and learning!

You can download the set of fun printable grids here

This printable is an A4 sized pdf file, you will need a pdf reader such as adobe acrobat to open it. If you are printing on US ‘letter sized’ paper be sure to select ‘fit’ or ‘shrink to fit’ from your printer options.

Please remember that the printables at picklebums.com are for personal use only, you may not sell, share, or link directly to these files.

More Hands-On Learning Ideas

If you enjoyed this fun hands-on learning idea you might like these other easy ideas and activities:

A simple invitation to play with pattern blocks - plus lots of ideas, activities and resources for pattern block play
Pattern Block Ideas, Activities, and Free Printables
printable number cards with dots 1 - 10 with various items counted
Printable Number Cards
Letter lego blocks and CVC site word cards
Lego Letter Blocks and Free Printable CVC Word Cards
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Filed Under: Activities for kids, Printables Tagged With: activities for preschoolers, activities for school kids, activities for toddlers, art for kids, fine motor activities, language, maths learning, printables

Read the comments or scroll down to add your own:

  1. Jeanette Nyberg says

    These are amazing! So simple and they inspire all sorts of ideas- my printer is about to be chugging out a few of these for tonight.

    Reply
  2. SERAP says

    They’re so fuuny and we will make so much fun with my daughter :)

    Reply
  3. Amie says

    We have laminated a set for graph, language and math work. Love the printables – thanks so much

    Reply
  4. Amie says

    We are loving using these and they have been particularly helpful for maths. I was wondering though if it would be possible to have one that did 0 instead of the 10 please? We have been getting into some quite complex equations with a tactile learner!

    Reply
    • katepickle says

      I’m sorry the printable is only available as is. You could create your own zero piece or just chop the one off the ten :)

      Reply
  5. Karen Ganon says

    I love that you generously shared different sizes. I think some great work with drawing to different scales could be done, as well as so many other acitivities! Thanks so much!

    Reply
  6. julie says

    thank you for making these. i have been told that the grids my help my son with staying on task with math problems etc. regular graph paper is much to small for his handwriting.

    Reply

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