Fun With Geometric Shapes

What do you want for breakfast today? Circles or triangles? Children love learning Geometry through fun gaming activities!  How can families help young children prepare for success in geometry?  A game with shapes is a great start. There are many ways to interact with your children and grandchildren while learning about shapes. 

Materials  Needed:

Ten popsicle (craft) sticks, glue, construction paper, and crayons

What To Do:

  Draw and point out the characteristics of some basic shapes like squares, rectangles, triangles, pentagons, circles, rhombus (diamond) and trapezoids, or read a book about shapes. Then take a walk around your house and help children identify basic shapes. If it is a nice day take a walk outside and look for those shapes. Later, choose a place with a flat surface and together count out ten sticks.

  Help children create a given shape using a specified number of sticks. For example, you could ask children to make a shape with three sticks. Help your child remember the name of that shape. See if a rectangle could be made with all ten sticks and then create that shape together. What about a square? Investigate what makes a square different from a rectangle. Together find the greatest number of sticks it would take to make a square. Ask your children if it is possible to make a circle. Why not? Be sure to identify each shape as you help your children create it.

  Talk about where you saw these shapes on your walk. Encourage your children to find more. You could play “Find that Shape” game with this. Take turns saying the name of a shape and see if children can find it.  Then trade places.

How Will This Help My Children?

  Families are helping children identify different shapes and learning important math vocabulary that is also part of reading and speaking vocabulary. Your children are practicing counting skills as they use a different number of sticks to build shapes and developing logic and problem solving skills as they discover how to make the figures.

What Else Can We Do?

  Your children might enjoy gluing the sticks down into a particular shape and then adding details to make a picture. For example, a house is made up of a triangle (roof) and a square or rectangle. Flowers, grass and sun could be added. They may also want to make a picture with geometric designs. Introduce more shapes if you think your children are ready.

  Great books to discover together are “My Very First Shape Book” by Eric Carle, “Shapes, Shapes, Shapes”and other books by Tana Hoban,  “Mouse Shapes” by Ellen Stoll Walsh, and” Flip a Shape: Play! “by SAMi” Books by Ed Emberley help older children use step by step directions and geometric shapes to draw almost anything.

For more math activities see the authors’ book “Learning through the Seasons” online at: http://www.grandparentsteachtoo.org/ and listen to this and many other activities at WNMU Audio Podcast 

Illustration & photo: 

Mark Nowicki & Scaglione, Margaret. fan1.jpg. March, 2008. Pics4Learning. 22 May 2013