Shapes for pre kindergarten

2D Shape Activities for Preschool, Pre-K, and Kindergarten

Learning about 2D shapes is a must for every early childhood classroom. I’m here to share with you my favorite, go-to 2D shapes activities! Some teachers may do a shapes theme or unit (like me), some may do a shape of the week, and some sprinkle in shape activities all year long. These activities will work for all types of classrooms and teaching styles! Grab your lesson plan binder, and let’s get started! Want all shape printables now? You can find them in my Shapes Unit on TPT HERE.

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Shape Manipulatives

When setting up a shape activity, the first thing I do is go into my supply closet and pull out all my shape games, manipulatives, and puzzles. Pattern blocks, shape cookies, and shape magnet blocks are distributed into various classroom centers. Students need to be playing, manipulating and creating with shapes all over the classroom, not just in the math center!

I love this 2D & 3D shape building set! It’s a ton of fun and comes with shape cards.

Toothpick Shapes

Toothpick Shapes are a fun and interactive way to learn shapes! Students can make shapes with toothpicks and play dough or marshmallows. When teaching your little learners about shapes, it’s important to teach about the sides and vertices too. Use those big vocabulary words! Feel, touch and count the number of sides and vertices a shape has. Don’t forget that a circle doesn’t have any sides or vertices!

In the Discovery Center: Learning about math and science

In the discovery center, I set up a shapes exploration table. The wall has shape posters with real photographs, the back of the table is lined with shape building cards and manipulatives and translucent shapes. There is a sorting board with shape flashcards on top. It’s just a poster board I made with tape. Super simple! The basket is filled with real objects and shape cards students can sort. This exploration table gives students the opportunity to talk about, touch, feel, build, and manipulate shapes with a peer or independently.

Shape Building Blocks Cards! This is a close up of the building block shape cards. Students use the blocks to create the shape on the card. After the shape theme is over, put the shape building cards in with your manipulatives or STEM drawers!

Geoboard shape cards! I put these shape geoboard cards in my geoboard basket. Students can make the shapes with loom bands on the geoboard. To introduce this activity, I put it out for table time as an arrival activity. It’s also great to build those little fine motor muscles too!

Shape cover up! Cover up is a fun game to practice matching shape! Students spin the spinner and cover the matching shape. I love these translucent spinners for my math games. This game is in my Shapes pack. It comes in four different levels.

Shapes graph it! This is another fun shapes game that my students love. It’s also a great opportunity to talk about more, less and equal to. Try using magnet bingo chips to cover the graph then using a magnet wand at the end to make the game even more exciting.

In the Sensory Table

This shape sensory table is filled with shaped manipulatives and a few cupcake pans for sorting. It has foam shape beads, shape chains and translucent shapes. Perfect for sorting, lacing, and linking together. And you guessed it, it’s great for their fine motor, too!

Transition Activity

Shape sort! Transition activities are the perfect time to do a quick assessment or learning check. We have snack after music and movement time. I always plan a transition activity for that time for several reasons. The first is so the whole class isn’t lined up at the same time to wash their hands, which is just asking for crazy behaviors to occur. The second is because it’s another time I can squeeze in more learning! What I do is call on a student and give them a card to sort. It’s a quick and easy way for me to check and see if they know or don’t know a shape.

In the Library Center

Sand writing trays with shape flashcards! Students can write and draw shapes in the sand. This tray is from a lacing set but you can use any small tray you have. I know some teachers use foil pie plates or kid plastic divided dinner plates for writing trays.

Shape mini books! After we make a shape mini books together during small group or table time, I put them in the center. They LOVE making them! Staplers scare me a bit with my little learners so I put in this stapleless stapler! It’s amazing!

Shapes emergent reader! For a small group activity, students create their own shape emergent reader. After they are complete and we have read them a few times together, they are put in the library center for students to read.

In the Art Center

My students LOVE play dough trays so I try to make one for each theme we do. In this activity, they create play dough shape monsters. Students use the shape cookie cutters to create the body. Then add arms, legs, eyes and hair using cut up pipe cleaners, small popsicle sticks, toothpicks, and googly eyes. The tray is from the Dollar Tree.

Play dough shape mats! Students can create play dough shapes on these shape mats. They can make the shape by rolling play dough snakes or by molding the dough.

Shape Prints! It’s great fine motor and makes beautiful pieces of art for your classroom. We cut up paper towel tubes for this circle printing project.

We printed with wooden shape blocks too!

Shape collages! It’s important to provide activities for students to create new items using shapes. In fact, it’s a learning objective/standard in many states. Students need to be able to manipulate shapes to create new shapes, objects or pictures. Shape collages are the perfect activity to address this learning objective.

Single shape collages! You can also have students create shape collages using just one kind of shape. One year my students were struggling with triangles so we created triangle shape collages. Students were finding triangle shapes, talking about triangles (how they are alike and different), and making pictures with triangles!

Dramatic Play

You can change the dramatic play center to so many different things for a shape theme but my favorite thing to do is a Pizza Restaurant. There are shapes all over a pizza restaurant. The pizzas can be different shapes and the slices too! Then the toppings are so many different shapes too. You should totally try it!

Make learning about shapes FUN by providing your students with hands-on learning experiences and play! Want all the 2D Shape printables in this post? Click HERE to grab my 2D Shapes unit from my TPT store. It’s packed with over 200 pages of shape building cards (legos, geoboards, popsicle sticks, toothpicks, play dough), posters, sorting mats, worksheets, games & MORE.

Learning about shapes is a fun theme and concept to do with little learners and you can check more fun shape activities by clicking on the image below!

Love these shape activities? Pin this image!

Free Shapes Preschool Lesson Plans

In order to be ready for kindergarten, preschoolers benefit from learning their shapes. Here are 16+ shape activities for preschoolers that are already formatted into weekly lesson plans. Just download them from the end of this post.

Already-Planned-For-You Shape Activities for Preschoolers

Get your free preschool lesson plans at the end of this post.

Learning shapes is the most basic skill within the geometry discipline of math, so it makes sense that we spend some time teaching our preschoolers about shapes.

But there’s more to shapes than just their names. These preschool shape activities will take you beyond just memorizing shape names.

FAQ About How to Teach Shapes to Preschoolers

The following are the most frequently asked questions about how to teach shapes to preschoolers and toddlers.

How do you teach preschoolers about shapes?

Like many early childhood concepts, the more variety and the more hands-on activities you can offer the better your preschooler or toddler will learn. Make a shapes sensory bin. Read books about shapes. Hide shapes around the house and seek them out. Cut out shapes from construction paper and glue them together to make artwork. These are a few examples of how to teach shapes to preschoolers.

What shapes should preschoolers know?

By the time a preschooler is bound for kindergarten, they should be able identify the following shapes:

~ circle
~ square
~ triangle
~ rectangle
~ oval
~ rhombus
~ heart
~ star

You can find this and more in my Toddler & Preschool Assessment & Portfolio Pack.

Why teach shapes in preschool?

Teaching shapes to your preschooler is more than just teaching them to name them. Learning shapes helps children identify and organize visual information. Learning shapes also helps children understand other signs and symbols, such as street signs or icons on a computer app.

Get free preschool lesson plans at the end of this post.

Hands-on Preschool Shape Activities

These shape activities are available in a download at the end of this post. They offer 16+ activities to complete over the course of a week and are a part of my Learn At Home Preschool Lesson Plans.

To see more of my free Learn At Home Preschool Lesson Plans, just click below.

>>> Learn At Home Preschool Lesson Plans Collection <<<

Literacy Activities for a Shapes Theme

Building Letters & Shapes Using Pipe Cleaners – Did you know that learning shapes help children recognize letters? Letters are very similar to shapes. The letter V is a triangle missing a side, and the letter O is just a circle. Using pipe cleaners, invite your preschooler to build some basic shapes. Can you turn any of those shapes into a letter or number with a quick tweak? What new letters/numbers can you make?

Shapes and Letters Collage – Using an old magazine or two, invite your preschooler to cut out all different kinds of shapes. While looking for shapes, encourage them to look in the magazine for the letters in their names. Look for favorite toys or foods, too! Cut everything out and assemble on a collage. Invite your preschooler to talk about their collage and name all the items they picked out. Then display it proudly!

Don’t Forget Picture Books About Shapes

When I first started teaching, there weren’t many picture books to help teach shapes to preschoolers. But things have changed! Here is a book list featuring my favorite shape books to read to my preschoolers.

Math and Science Activities for a Shapes Theme

Geometry Shape Train – Help your preschooler learn about the different properties of shapes by manipulating them to fit into a specific shape or design on paper. This activity develops spatial awareness and shape recognition. Print the train template and the shapes, and match the shapes to fill the train! Your growing engineer will love this activity!

Shape Activities with Movement – Grab some painters tape and make a few large shapes on the floor. Encourage your preschooler to trace the shape with their hand (and foot!) and hop, dance, or slide across the shape. This is a good activity for rainy days, too.

Which Shape is the Strongest? – Fold three pieces of construction paper into differently-shaped tubes. Fold one tube into a triangle, one into a square, and the other into a cylinder. Test which tube is the strongest when putting various items with a similar weight on top.

Playful Learning Activities for a Shapes Theme

Body Shapes – What shapes can you make with your body? Invite your preschooler to lie on the floor and try to make different shapes. What if you worked with a sibling or friend? What shapes can you make then? Take pictures of your preschooler and show them the shapes they made.

Mirror, Mirror Game – Face your preschooler and have them attempt to copy all your movements. Be silly! Run in place! Act like a monkey! Then switch roles and copy your preschooler. Can you make shapes with your body or hands? Challenge your preschooler to name “new shapes” they might create with their bodies while you copy them.

Sock Basketball – Help with the laundry by tossing clothes into the basket. Roll up clothes into a ball (or sphere) and toss them into the laundry basket. Two points for making it in on the first try! Make it into a fun game and gather all the laundry from around the house to be a big helper.

Download your free shape activities for preschooler at the end of this post.

Social-Emotional Activities for a Shapes Theme

Kid Yoga – Devoting time to stretch, move, and center our bodies is great for people of all ages! Go to YouTube and watch the video Kids Yoga Alphabet. Join in with the instructor and encourage your preschooler to practice some of the alphabet shape movements. If they are hesitant, allow them to watch and begin when they are ready. Encourage taking deep breaths, trying to be calm and centered, and model making mistakes as you try different poses. Keep it fun and engaging!

Drawing Confidence – Go to YouTube and listen to the book A Drawing Game by Anitha Murthy. After listening, invite your preschooler to do just like the young girl in the book and think of the shapes when she intends to draw something. As children get older, they often struggle with their drawing not matching the idea in their head or get frustrated when it doesn’t come out as they had hoped. Encouraging your preschooler to always think of the shapes when drawing will help them feel confident and like a true artist!

Just Plain Fun Activities for a Shapes Theme

Shape Flower Craft – This fun craft allows your preschooler to get creative with shapes and colors. Cut out various shapes from construction paper…the more the better! Challenge your preschooler to use the shapes to make various flowers. How many different designs can they come up with? If you have a preschool class, make an entire flower garden of shapes to hang on the wall!

Shape Pizza Craft – Kids love pizza! So why not make a shape pizza using construction paper? Invite your preschooler to draw various shapes on colored paper that represent the toppings. Circles for pepperoni, rectangles for cheese, triangles for pineapples…the options are endless! Glue them all down on a large circle for your pizza crust and have fun being a pizza chef! This is also a great activity to add to your Food and Nutrition Theme.

Playdough Shapes – Get creative with playdough shapes! Make houses, pizza, cakes, cars, and more. What shapes are used to make these different items?

Our Favorite Toys to Teach Shapes

You don’t need specialty toys or manipulatives to be an effective teacher, but if you’re looking for some shape manipulatives, these are some of the most used in my own classroom.

Safe Online Activities for a Shapes Theme

Online Story – Go to YouTube and listen to the book Round is a Tortilla: A Book of Shapes by Roseanne Thong. As you are listening, review any unknown words with your preschooler. Encourage your preschooler to answer the questions on each page as you read to make this book even more interactive.

Learn Shapes with Pete the Kitty – Follow along with our favorite Pete the Kitty and learn shapes and colors! And who doesn’t love Pete the Cat?!

Shapes are Everywhere Song – This song offers a great way to help your preschooler identify the names of the shapes, as well as where we see these shapes in our everyday lives.

Get Your Free Preschool Shape Activities Here

These shape activities ate written up as lesson plans to be completed in about a week’s time, but you can use them any time of year! Grab your free Learn At Home Preschool Lesson Plans by clicking the image below.

You Might Also Like These Lesson Plans

This Shapes Preschool Math Unit includes everything you need to teach beginning geometry and shapes in preschool math!

It gives you the lesson plans and the centers, as well as smaller daily math activities to keep your students learning. Not only will your preschoolers learn how to identify basic shapes, but they will also develop spatial awareness skills. From matching and sorting to graphing shapes and tracing, your preschooler will gain a strong foundation in geometry with these lesson plans.

With four complete weeks of lesson plans and over 36 hands-on activities, your preschooler will love math, too!

Sarah Punkoney, MAT

I’m Sarah, an educator turned stay-at-home-mama of five! I’m the owner and creator of Stay At Home Educator, a website about intentional teaching and purposeful learning in the early childhood years. I’ve taught a range of levels, from preschool to college and a little bit of everything in between. Right now my focus is teaching my children and running a preschool from my home. Credentials include: Bachelors in Art, Masters in Curriculum and Instruction.

stayathomeeducator.com/

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MAFs for kindergarten, installation of small architectural forms for kindergartens

MAFs for kindergarten, installation of small architectural forms for kindergartens - tramplinsport.ru

Home — Outdoor playground equipment (MAFs) — MAFs for kindergartens

Small architectural forms for kindergartens are an obligatory part of the equipment of any kindergarten. Children are very fond of playing outdoors, in addition, such equipment helps them develop and learn about the world around them.

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