Teaching Shapes
Teaching shapes to children is an important educational activity. The ability to recognize and describe shapes is a fundamental skill that provides a foundation for more advanced skills.Why Teaching Shapes is Important
Shapes help children with a range of important skills including:
Improved Communication – the ability to use shapes to describe objects will greatly enhance a child’s ability to verbally communicate.
For example, being able to use descriptive phrases such as ’round cookie’ or ‘square window’.
Greater Creative skills – the ability to draw or create shapes will help your child transition from stick figure drawings into more detailed drawings using shapes or be able to create a face out of craft pieces.
Sorting objects – children can use shapes as a method for sorting objects. Children that can sort objects by circles, squares, triangles, ovals or rectangles.
Sorting is an important skill for children as it helps them develop ability to think about the attributes of objects and how they relate to other objects. Sorting is a great way to develop logical thinking.
Pre-reading and writing skills – learning to recognize shapes is an important step on the way to learning to recognize letters.
The drawing skills developed in drawing shapes provide children a foundation for learning to write letters.
Letters contain lots of different shapes – circles, lines, parts of triangles and curves. Drawing a circle helps children write b, d, g, p, q. Drawing a triangle helps with the letters k, v, w.
Geometry – through play your child will learn that some shapes are good for rolling while other are good for stacking or building towers.
Being able to use your imagination to take an object look at how it fits into a space with a shape sorter or place lots of shapes in to a box.
Teaching Shapes with Games and Activities
There are lots of great shapes games and activities you can do with your child. Learning through games and activities can be fun for you and your child.
Using games such as spotting shapes around the house or sorting objects by their shape are a great for teaching shapes. Incorporating shapes into your craft time is another way to include shapes in your fun time. You can ask your child to create pictures or objects using basic shapes.
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Teaching with Toys
Tupperware Shape Sorter – The ball consists of two halves that can pull apart – one half is red and the other blue. There are ten yellow shapes that fit through the holes in the ball.
As well as the regular shapes of triangle, square circle, this game will also familiarize your child with unique shapes such as the trapezium, oval, pentagon and hexagon.
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Teaching with a Shapes Chart
The Shapes Chart can be a useful tool to help teach shapes to your child.
The shapes chart below contains the simplest and most common shapes that your child will encounter – square, rectangle, circle, oval, triangle and diamond. Perfect for children only just learning their shapes.
You can find more shapes charts options on our article on shapes charts.
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Teaching Shapes with Worksheets
You can reinforce your shapes lessons by using shapes worksheets. There are many worksheets available on the internet that you can download and use. Some examples of worksheets are shown below.
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Teaching Shapes with Videos
There are lots of great shapes videos available. Great visuals plus music and song can be fun and make learning much easier.
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Teaching Shapes Resources
Shapes Chart – a range of teaching shapes worksheets has been compiled to teach children to recognize and draw shapes from basic through to advanced.
Shape Worksheets – a range of shapes worksheets has been compiled to teach children to recognize and draw shapes from basic through to advanced.
Flashcards – you can use shape flashcards to teach shapes to your child.
Educational Toys – the tupperware shape sorter is a great educational toy that you can use to teach shapes.
Shape Videos – we’ve compiled a range of shape videos from YouTube that are great to use when introducing shapes to preschoolers.