Association Picture Cards: What Goes Together?

About this resource

Sock and shoe. Key and lock. Bee and sunflower. This deck gives a child 24 picture cards to cut apart and match, 12 pairs, and every card has exactly one partner. The cards join edge to edge, so cutting is straight lines only, and no card touches its own partner, side or corner, so the page never gives an answer away. Four student pages take a child from gluing on a faint picture to drawing a line to writing the partner word, and the adult pages score the same matching and track it over time.

WHAT IS INCLUDED -- 24 pages, 404 type-in fields

The Pair Cards

• 24 picture cards in full color, 12 pairs, each a big cut-apart piece laid out 6 across and 4 down, with the word under the picture -- socks and shoe, key and lock, needle and thread, bee and sunflower, dog and bone, monkey and banana, umbrella and rain cloud, toothbrush and tooth, pen and paper, mouse and cheese, paintbrush and palette, moon and star
• The same 24 cards again as an ink-saver set in pure black outlines, for the photocopier
• A note on the card pages naming the 8 pictures a child may name another way (shoe, lock, thread, sunflower, rain cloud, pen, paper, palette), so you can decide once how that answer is marked

Match Pages And Answer Key

• Match Mat 1 -- six pairs, the first picture printed and a faint picture of its partner to glue the card onto, plus a "draw two things that go together" box
• Match Mat 2 -- six different pairs, the first picture printed and an empty box to glue the partner in, plus the same drawing box
• Match Page: Draw a Line -- six pictures on the left, six on the right in a different order, draw a line between the two that go together. No cutting and no glue
• Match Mat 3 -- the second picture of six pairs printed, and the child writes the partner word on primary handwriting lines, then a sentence about why they go together
• Every student page has a "My name" line, one short instruction with a picture, and a small level shape (a dot, a square or a triangle, not a number)
• An adult answer key: all 12 pairs with both pictures, the alternate names, which cards each page uses, and a line to write your own rule

Probe And Track

• 3 quick probe forms (A, B, C), 4 pairs each, every pair given twice (once with each picture shown), so 8 marks a form. No pair is on two forms: A, B and C together are all 12 pairs
• Full-Deck Probe -- all 12 pairs in one sheet, two marks each (24 in all), and a line for the card the child chose when it was wrong
• Data Log -- 17 rows: date, form, correct, out of, percent, notes
• Percent Graph -- 14 probes across, 0-100 percent grid, a field for the team's own criterion
• Caseload Summary -- 16 rows: student, last form given, baseline, current, trend, decision

Share And Write

• Match at Home -- a family update built from five of the same pairs, a matching game to do together, a weekly practice table and lines for what the family noticed
• Phrase Bank -- 19 observable-language starters across 5 groups (accuracy, which pairs, carryover, the log and graph, the caseload page)
• Filled Example -- an invented student, eight probes, every percent re-counted from its own row

ALSO INSIDE: Start Here, a contents page with page thumbnails, four section dividers, and a "what's next" back page.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a fillable PDF: print the student pages and cards for the child, and type into the log, graph, caseload page, family page and probe-form fields, or print those and use a pen. It works offline with no account or subscription. It is NOT an editable online slideshow or word-processor document, and it is not a norm-referenced or standardized test.

It is a pair match, not a group sort: every card has one partner, and there are no category names on any card. It carries no elicitation, cueing or modeling script. It does not decide what counts as a correct match, a criterion, or a typical rate for matching pairs: every one of those is your own call, written once and reused every session. It covers 12 pairs; it is not a word list.

Who This Is For

Special education teachers, speech-language pathologists and paraprofessionals with young or pre-reading students working on finding the picture that goes with another, and the families who get the matching page sent home.

Pictures: Noto Emoji by Google, Apache License 2.0 (color); Fluent Emoji by Microsoft, MIT License (ink-saver black and white).