File folder games are a staple in my classroom. They are great tasks for the kids to do on their own, they're easy to store and you can teach any number of skills using them. I keep mine organized in this handy-dandy colour-coded cart that I bought at Michael's. Each colour has a certain type of activity, and each file folder activity has a corresponding sticker so it's easy to return it to it's home and to find one that you're looking for.
To make these activities, I don't actually use file folders. I use regular cardstock that I can put through my laminator (the best $20 that I ever spent!) and then tape them together. Most of the activities, I create myself, but I did purchase two books of file folder games because they were fairly inexpensive to purchase and were a nice change to all of the hand-made ones.
I bought these 2 for about $16 each from Amazon (I know other teacher stores sell them for much more) and they were well worth the price. There is a lot of assembly required (lots of work for my trusty laminator) but they turned out great in the end.
I downloaded a few games from File Folder Fun (http://www.filefolderfun.com/FileFolderGames.html) and borrowed some of their ideas to make my own.
Size Activities
Some of the easiest activities to make are ones for size matching. Find an image that you like online (I like to find black outline images and then I just colour them on my own) and resize it a bunch of times. Print of two sets, one to make the background, and then colour the second set. These become your matching pieces.
Colour Activities
Colour matching activities are also easy to make and you can create them for any area of interest. Most of these I made by just finding pictures I liked online, printing them off and colouring. I had some grade 6 students at school help with some of the colouring.
To mix things up a little, I made some matching ones with coloured popsicle sticks.
Picture Matching
Picture matching file folder activities are my new favourites to make. Memory games and flashcards (preferably found at the dollar store!) are a great find - one deck can make 4 file folder games. Usually I will cut half of the cards in half vertically and the other half horizontally. For larger pictures, they can be cut into more pieces.
This one I made out of wall stickers I found at the dollar store. For these ones they are matching the coloured stickers to the black and white photocopied images.
Or this one uses some different animal shapes I found in the classroom. They are matching to the black shadow of each piece.
Sorting Activities
Library pockets are perfect pouches for sorting different pieces. This is one type of file folder that doesn't always need Velcro!
I found these transportation erasers at the dollar store and made the sorting board for them.
Letter/Text Matching Activities
We had an old alphabet bingo game in the classroom, which I cut up to make a variety of different letter matching activities.
The "Alphabetanimals" font (found at http://alphabetimals.com/en/) is great for students who are just beginning to look at print and text. The bright coloured animal shapes are visually appealing and "trick" the students into matching the letters. I printed off a sheet of the letters in colour and then photocopied it so that the students are matching to the black and white images.
Here is a lower and upper case matching activity. For the letter pairs that don't look the same I've written in the correct letter with the dry erase marker, and as the students learn the pairs, they can be wiped off.
Here is an environmental print matching activity made from packages from the kids' lunches.
I have a lot of Thomas lovers in my class, so this is a Thomas characters name matching activity. I found these images at http://www.oncoloring.com/thomas-and-friends-coloring-pages.html
I have also turned worksheets from activity workbooks into "file folder games". Rather than having the students write the answers on the paper, I made game pieces out of counters that they can stick into the correct spot.
Number Activities
I also had an old number bingo game which I cut apart to make different activities.
An old knock-off Uno game and number flashcards made some great pocket activities. For the first one, the numbers are written on in dry erase marker so that some of them can be wiped off as the students become more familiar with the numbers and their order.
I made the following games with images I found online. I added stickers to be the items to be counted. For this one, the students are matching the numbers and the correct number of sprinkles.
For the next two, there are a few options. The students will need to count the stickers on each piece for all options. They will either need to put the correct number under the picture, the correct picture over the number, or find pairs and stick them to the folder. All of the pieces are removable which allows for the variations in the activity, and for the numbers to be moved around the game so that they aren't just memorizing the location of each piece.
This is just another matching activity with different counters I had at school.
Here is a counting one.
There are also lots of great worksheets that you can turn into math file folder activities.
Miscellaneous Activities
This one is a design matching. I printed off an image I liked and then drew different patterns on each one. I coloured one copy and used the black and white image for the file folder.
I found this patterning game at a children's thrift store. I just added some Velcro pieces (the cards were already laminated pretty thickly) so that the pieces would stay in place.
I found some cheap, small puzzles at the dollar store. I mounted them on laminated sheets and added some Velcro to the back of each piece.
So these are some of the different types of file folder activities I have in my classroom. I hope that they give you some ideas! If you have any others, please share them with me - I'm always looking for more!
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