We have just completed our unit on shapes, and the students have become experts at identifying both flat shapes and solid figures. They have worked hard to master recognizing various shapes, including circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, hexagons, ellipses, rhombuses, trapezoids, and solid figures such as cubes, cones, pyramids, spheres, cylinders, and rectangular prisms.
To aid their learning, we incorporated a variety of multisensory activities, games, videos, songs, crafts, and movements. Specific hands-on activities included creating shapes with our bodies, making rectangular robots, crafting oval/eclipse buddies, constructing triangle creations, and using manipulatives like tangrams to form images from shapes.
Shapes are essential to our daily lives and can be found in everything we do. For example, students encounter shapes while building with STEM bins during morning choices, notice shapes around the classroom, and even see them in some of the worksheets they complete. Additionally, throughout our patterns unit, we frequently used shapes to understand different pattern types.
You can also embark on a shape and solid figure hunt around your home, in your pantry, or outdoors. Look around and see what shapes you can find, and try to identify any solid figures as well. This activity would be fun to do with your child, and they might spot shapes and figures that you hadn’t noticed!
