Shapes

Personal Social and Emotional

In small groups play games that include shapes such as matching shapes, puzzles, looking for shapes around the room and encourage children to work together to solve the puzzles. Make sure adults are there to help if the children need it and ensure the activities are achievable.

Physical Development

Play games that involve different shaped objects for example bat and ball, rectangle bat and round ball. Get basketballs out which are round and aim for the round hoop. Hide different objects of specific shapes outside and ask the children to go and find them. Encourage the children to use the shape sorters to help critical thinking, problem solving, fine motor skills.

Communication and Language

Using pictures, show the children some different shapes and model the language for them to learn. Encourage them to find the shapes around the room and to tell us what shape different objects are. Visual aids needed include pictures, books and objects in everyday life. Discuss the different shapes in the children's everyday lives such as what shape are pizzas? What shape is your clock? What shape is a tissue? Use pictures of shapes with the shape name on to encourage recognition.

Mathematics

Use the building blocks to encourage the children to sort the different shapes out for example rectangles and squares into piles. Have different size blocks out and also containers that children can put the blocks into. Also, encourage them to build shapes with the blocks. Shape sorting activities, colouring, cutting and sticking.

Literacy

Use books to show the children the different 2d shapes. Encourage the children to hold and look through the books. Make sure there are labelled shapes up around preschool. Discuss the shapes with children to help them learn them.

Understanding the World

Take the children out around the town and show them, and ask them, to point out different shapes they see within their environment.

Expressive Art and Design

Encourage the children to build with the big blocks to make props for the other toys. For example, make a ramp for the cars using rectangle blocks. To music, encourage the children to use their bodies to replicate shapes, for example, raising both arms above their heads and joining their hands together to make a rectangle, standing straight with arms by the side to make a rectangle.

Focused Vocabulary

Square, circle, rectangle, oval, hexagon, pentagon, star, heart, octagon, triangle