Friday’s Learning Experiences for Kids: Shapes

For the next week of our Friday Program we focused on Shapes.
Here’s a little of what we did …

At the play dough table we had play dough shape cutter that I found in a big cookie cutter box at Coles and these fabulous shape mats from here that printed and laminated.

Kids were encouraged to make shapes using play dough cutter or roll long snakes to make shapes on the mats. Lots and lots of colour and shape talk while the kids were working on their fine, motor skills manipulating all that play dough.

On another table was some glue collage using different shapes cut from paper.

I was thinking the kids might make things using the shapes but they were having much more fun gluing them randomly. Here are some of the kids pieces ..

I put this great Melissa & Doug pattern block set out on a table too.

There were popsticks with velcro for shape making on a table too

as well as shape printing using paper towel rolls bent into different shapes that I found here.

This is the book we read just before home time. It’s a favourite of mine from my very first years of teaching many many moons ago.

Help your kids learn about shapes in their everyday life by looking around. What shape is the cereal box? your bowl? your plate? your window? Shapes are everywhere and learning doesn’t always have to feel like learning just throw it into your everyday chatting.

So why do these types of activities if your child already knows their shape names. Well the learning about shapes doesn’t stop there. What’s the same and different about squares and rectangles? Talk to your kids about how many sides, what types of sides (round, straight, long, short. If your older kids what to play with their younger siblings that’s great too because you could talk about angles of shapes too! Start with simple comparing of angles (bigger, smaller) then introduce names. I love activities that can be adapted to suit all ages and stages of kids and their learning.

Check out our first week’s activities here