Play Shape and Seek Game

Education Category: General, Games
Ages:

Play Shape and Seek Game

Shapes are all around us and young kids love learning about them!  
Our surrounding gives us plenty of excuses to talk about shapes.  
For example:
while you are sitting at the backseat of a car you can show your kid the differences in traffic signs,
the circle roundabout ,
the rectangular parking ,
space  or the octagon stop signs etc.

When you go for a walk ask your kid what shape the bricks on the neighbor's house are made of or talk about
the triangle shaped roof as an example.

Here is a Shape and Seek Game:

What You Need:

• 5-10 pieces of construction paper- all the same color (to avoid distraction and keep focus only on shapes)
• scissors
• tape

What You Do:

1. Using the construction paper,  cut out squares,  circles,  triangles,  and rectangles.  
    Once your child masters these basic shape names  you can excercise with more difficult shapes  like diamonds,  hexagons and octagons.   
    While you may be tempted to break out a rainbow of paper choices,  resist!  
    Keeping all shapes the same color will help kids focus on the shape itself rather than the color and speed up the learning curve.

2.   Ask your child to cover her eyes and count to 20.  
      In the meantime,  take your pile of shapes and tape them around the house.  
      When she opens her eyes,  send her off to find one particular shape.
      When she's got them,  move on to the other shapes,  one by one,  until she finds all.

3.   Fair's fair! so it's your turn now!
     Collect all the shapes and hand them over to your child.  
     Close your eyes and him/her hide these.
     Count to 20 and when time's up,  ask your child to assign you a shape.  
     Pretend to need to have reminders of what each shape looks like before you find it.  

     Ask questions like:
     'How many sides does a triangle have again?'
     'Is the square the one with four equal sides?'  
     'Is that a rectangle?'
      ...

changing teaching roles will reinforce the concepts about shapes and your child will feel great being able to help you learn something for a change!

 
4.   Once you both get fluent in recognizing shapes , you can add a guessing game element to the mix.
      Give clues rather than naming the shape.
      For example: 'I  am thinking of a shape that has at least 4 equal sides' and head on over to the kitchen for some shape snacking.  
      You can cut sandwiches into circles with a cookie cutter or the back of a glass or just pick shapes ready to eat such as cookies, sliced carrots make great circles,  crackers etc.
     
      If you can't find things in the cupboard it might be time to take your shape hunt to the next location...the grocery store!

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