Shapes Chart

Teaching your child about shapes is important because it can greatly improve their ability to communicate – it helps your child verbally describe objects and also with their ability to draw.

The Basic Chart

The basic shapes chart contains the most common shapes that your child will encounter – square, rectangle, circle, oval, triangle and diamond. These shapes are also the simplest for your child to draw.

This chart is designed for use by children who are only just learning their shapes.

One of the first things your child will learn to draw is a face, so you can incorporate the teaching of simple circles and ovals into this early drawing. Later as your child starts to draw stick figures, you can use the other shapes for body parts.

View the Basic Shapes Chart as a free and printable chart.

The Advanced Shapes Chart

The advanced shapes chart contains 16 shapes from the basic shapes through to some complex shapes such as trapezoids and parallelograms.

This chart features shapes that your child is bound to encounter at home, in books, toys, educational shows, crafts and activities.

If your child is ready for more challenging shapes you can try our 3D (three dimensional) shapes chart.

There are some great activities you can do to teach shapes with the chart including:

• After reciting the names of all the shapes, point to a shape and have your child tell you what shape it is. Then you call out the name of a shape and have your child point it out on the chart.
• Use the chart to spot shapes in your child’s room – for example, the door is a rectangle, the window is a square, the door knob is a circle, roof of a doll house contains a triangle and so forth.
• Have your children make the shapes out of playdoh and place the shapes on top of the chart.
• Have your child sort shapes into groups. Print out multiple copies of the chart and cut out the different shapes. Printing in black and white will allow your child to sort by shape rather than color.
• Have your child practice drawing each of the shapes – start by having the child trace the shapes and then move to drawing them freehand.

Shapes Resources

Teaching Shapes – find out why teaching shapes is important.
3D Shapes Chart – use the three dimensional shapes chart to teach 9 common 3D shapes to your child.
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.