I have noticed that my toddler, Strawberry, does not recognize shapes: she knows heart, moon, and star, but not the basics like circle and square. She calls ovals “footballs” and gets excited when she sees them though! I have been thinking for weeks that we needed to focus on learning the shapes.
When I saw that Krista’s Math Madness Wednesdays this week is about shapes, I thought it was time to put some ideas into action.
Here are some things we have done (in short intervals) this week, as well as ideas we have not yet done.
Read books about shapes. We love Karen Katz’ thick toddler board books, so we’ve focused on her Baby’s Shapes book this week. We currently have Shapes Are Everywhere! by Charles Ghigna and Ship Shapes by Stella Blackstone from the library. There are so many others to choose from! I’ve included more on the lesson plan ideas below.
- Make things out of tangram shapes. Many of the picture books feature ships, submarines, and treasures created out of shapes. Cut out paper, felt, or other fabric, and make your own creations by putting them back together!
- Sew lacing cards in familiar shapes. Lacing is great for practicing fine motor skills.
- Have shape hunts. Take pictures of the different shapes you find and put them in a book.
- Magazine shape hunt. Find pictures in magazine and put them together in a book.
- Shape matching. Practice by playing a matching game with shapes, or Go Fish. My son loved playing Go Fish when he was a toddler and preschooler; we made everything into a Go Fish game!
This is only week one of Shapes Fun, so I’ll have to keep you posted on how everything goes in the next weeks. In the mean time, here is a mini-Picture Book Lesson for you to use while you learn about shapes with your preschool or kindergartner!
Click on the image to download this freebie.
As always, if you find this useful or fun, please let me know so I can continue to make these for you!
What great ideas! I teach older students, but I always to see how things are introduced! Solid work!