Lately have been making new learning materials for my kiddos and today we are learning about shapes. You may think: isn’t this being taught at a younger age? Yes, I did teach them when they were younger but revising/refreshing what they learnt previously won’t cause any harm isn’t it?
Some of you may ask when is the best time to teach? Are they too young or are they too late to know all these? It depends on the child. It depends if they show any interest on the topic/subject. It depends how they want to learn, where they want to learn, when they want to learn and what they want to learn. You can’t expect an active child to sit still behind a desk and pay full attention to what you are going to teach, am I right?
On top of that, when you start teaching, you teach from basic levels and slowly progress to higher or advanced levels. A general guideline on when to teach shapes, is at the age of 2. You start teaching them simple and basic shapes like square, circle, triangle. By 2.5 years old, you move on to more advanced level like rhombus, octogan, heart, etc. Then by 3 years old, he/she should be able to identify all the shapes that you have taught.
What about preschooler? Isn’t that too simple for them? Well, there are even more advanced level to teach these group of preschoolers. That is the counting the number of sides (can also be done on toddlers), learning the words (can also teach them to spell), etc.
We began our lesson with identifying the shapes and matching the items to the correct shapes given. They even used their hands to make the shapes shown to them. Guess what shape are they making?
After revising the shapes and its words. I took everything out again and let them “fix” it by themselves this time round.
I have made a “calendar chart of shapes” for them which they had fun with it! It looked like a jigsaw puzzle that requires them to match the correct picture or word (more for preschooler) and number of sides.
I played a game of treasure hunt with my girl while my boy cutting and making a picture out of the shapes given.
Finally the worksheets. They get to cut out the pictures and paste it on the correct worksheet and practice writing the word (more for preschooler).
My kids enjoyed the activities. They learned the shape vocabulary quickly and were easily able to move onto the next step of the inquiry. We had an awesome day of fun on learning shapes! 🙂
PS: You can purchase our Shape Fun Pack for awesome activities to teach shapes by emailing us (youngsmarties@gmail.com) or private message us on FB (www.facebook.com/youngsmarties). Have fun learning!