Shape Challenges in Kindergarten

Shape Geo Boards

Shape design with hammer and nails

From a young age, students understand that shapes can be seen and found everywhere from blocks to books to art. Recently, the kindergarten mathematicians have been looking more deeply at shapes as they have practiced and solidified their understanding of 2-D shapes during partner math time. These hands-on activities provided opportunities for identifying shapes and exploring the different properties of shapes: how many sides do they have, how many vertices, what happens when  two shapes are put together?

Hexagon building with play dough and toothpicks

The shape explorers used play dough and toothpicks to create basic shapes and more complicated shapes, such as pentagons and octagons. We even discovered a new shape, a heptagon, a seven sided shape!

Creating a hepatgon

Roll, Add and Cover Shape Patterns Game

Another partner activity allowed for the partners to roll dice, add the numbers together, and then find the corresponding shapes to match on a pattern block card to complete a picture. A favorite kindergarten game, bingo,  was another way to move further into shapes as the children were combining colors and shapes to complete and fill the bingo card. Other children worked to draw two dimensional shapes using stencils or by free drawing.

Color and Shape Bingo

Our hands on shape work is helping to set the foundation for further geometric work down the road.
Throughout the partner shape math work, the children were sorting, adding, problem solving, strengthening fine motor skills and adding new shape names and characteristics of shapes (sides, vertices, pentagon, etc) to their growing vocabulary. The mathematicians then created shape collages with recycled materials and went on a shape scavenger hunt in and out of the school building. Be sure to ask your child which shapes were the easiest to find and which shapes were the hardest to find in the environment!

Creating with shape stencils