Learning geometrical shapes is an essential skill that plays a key role in understanding and identifying the various dimensions of an object. Shapes are an important part of our life and are quite prevalent in everything around us. Identifying and classifying these shapes is a foundational math skill that kids should have in their early years. Mathematical puzzles and games are an easy way to understand basic shapes from an elementary stage.
This vital skill of identifying shapes is quite rewarding for kids in many ways. Attaining this life skill enables kids to establish connections between various objects. They start to develop a sense of the world around them and verbalize what they see. As the world around us is full of shapes, kids have to interact with them on a daily basis. Knowledge of shapes allows kids to procure visual information of their surroundings, such as circular wheels or rectangular doors.
Having this basic knowledge also helps kids in studies such as reading, writing, math, and science. The first step in recognizing numbers and letters for kids is to identify their patterns by relating to shapes. When kids identify the shapes of letters or numbers, they can easily read and write them. This is the first step towards building a solid academic foundation. As children learn each geometrical shape, they slowly move a step forward towards building the next level of understanding geometry— this is the basis for learning advanced geometrical concepts later.
There are many fun classroom activities that can help you teach shapes in an interesting way. Practicing some interactive shape worksheets for young kids is an efficient way to enhance their knowledge. You can easily find some of these interactive shape worksheets at http://www.cuemath.com/. Providing kids with a lot of self-practice enables them to attain the confidence to apply their knowledge in various things.
Here are some fun activities that will help kids to develop an understanding of shapes for kids.
Play a Shapes Matching Game
Learning shapes involves thinking about various characteristics of objects by making observations about their similarities and similarities. Playing a shapes matching game will enable kids to understand and identify different shapes. You can easily teach through this fun activity by cutting paper into sets of shapes and telling kids to match them.
Make Shapes Using Craft Sticks
Colouring and crafting is an engaging activity that helps children in learning better. You can use some craft sticks to engage kids in coloring and crafting shapes with them. By learning to create various 2-D shapes like line, square, triangle, etc., with the popsicle sticks, kids will learn to understand shapes more easily.
Sort Objects Based on Shapes
Most kids in elementary stages are familiar with sorting various objects by colors. You can encourage them to sort colorful shapes and objects for easy understanding and learning with fun. This activity can also be done with simple objects like erasers, pencil boxes, balls, notebooks, etc.
Use Pattern Blocks
Pattern blocks are amazing fun, hands-on manipulatives that encourage kids to create shapes. They are a perfect enhancement method to promote any math skill. By exploring various shapes with these pattern blocks, kids can form the skills to visualize shapes in real life.
Paper Craft
Encourage kids to make simple crafts by using shapes and patterns cut out of paper. Help them to create some combined shapes by joining the pieces of these shapes. This will enable kids to remain focused and involved in the tasks. You can also review their knowledge of shapes by playing flashcards games to recognize shapes quickly.
