Episode Summary
Hey teacher friends! In today’s episode we are talking all about teaching shapes, specifically 2D shapes with students early on in the year. This is one of the first units that I do with my students, and it’s something that a lot of them come in knowing a good amount about. We can take what they already know and extend it to some deeper understanding. So we’ll get into some of my favorite ways to teach and explore shapes in kindergarten.
In this episode I share:
- Kindergarten shape activities
- Exploring shapes and building knowledge
- Explicit teaching of shape names and characteristics
- Extending shape exploration with play-doh and sorting activities
- Using pattern blocks and geoboards to explore shapes
Related Kindergarten Shape Blog Posts:
Kindergarten Shape Resources Mentioned:
- 2D and 3D Shapes
- 2D and 3D Shape Units (Digital and Print Activities)
- Shape Hunt Video – Shapes, Sides and Vertices
- Mouse Shapes Book (Amazon Affiliate)
- The Shape of Things Book (Amazon Affiliate)
- Not A Box Book (Amazon Affiliate)
Connect with Zeba:
- Instagram – @kindergartencafe
- Facebook – @kindergartencafe
- Website – www.kindergartencafe.org
- Tik Tok – @kindergartencafe
2D and 3D Shapes in Kindergarten
Read the Transcript
[00:01:33]:
Hey teacher friends, it’s Zeba from Kindergarten cafe. And in today’s episode, we are talking all about teaching shapes, specifically 2d shapes, with students early on in the year. This is one of the first units that I do with my students. It’s something that a lot of them come in knowing a good amount about, and we can take what they already know and extend it to some deeper understanding. So we’ll get into some of my favorite ways to teach and explore shapes in kindergarten. Let’s get started. You’re listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast, where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away. I’m Zeba, creator and founder of Kindergarten Cafe, and I help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time, work smarter, not harder, and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons.
[00:02:44]:
I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone, ready to start saving time and reducing your stress, all while using effective and purposeful lessons that students love. Let’s get started. As with any unit that I’m doing with my students, I like to give children the chance to explore with what we’re learning about before I add on any explicit teaching. So one of the first tools that they explore within the year is pattern blocks. But when we start our unit on shapes, we do even more exploration of pattern blocks and letting them explore with the shapes and make designs with the shapes. And on their own, they’re starting to see how the shapes connect to each other, how shapes can build up other shapes. For example, you know, six triangles can fill in the hexagon. They’re starting to notice how many sides each shape has.
[00:03:51]:
So they’re doing all of this on their own and building their own knowledge, which is more valuable than when I’m sitting there talking at them about the shapes. So having this time to explore is really valuable. And I let them continue this exploration throughout our unit. I have them, you know, create images and designs with the pattern blocks or the geo boards with the rubber bands. I encourage them to maybe copy designs that they are seeing, which helps them to really focus on, you know, making sure that they’re matching the shapes that they’re creating the picture, the number of lines the shape has, sides that they have, all that, as well as sorting pattern blocks by shape, by number of sides, all that kind of stuff. We also like to put out play DoH as a way for them to make their own shapes, and that is a really fun way for them to explore with this idea of shapes. But what I found is that students tend to make it a full shape. Like, they’ll make.
[00:05:04]:
They’ll sort of, like, fill in the picture of the triangle with the play Doh. And then because they’re sort of filling it in, it doesn’t really look like a triangle because it doesn’t have clear lines. So instead, I show them how they can roll out a line, kind of like a snake. They roll out a line of the play Doh, and then they use the lines to make the shapes, because, really, we want them to connect to the learning of the number of sides that each shape has with lines. And so we want them to build the shape using the sides of the shape and not just smushing together the play doh into the picture that they see. But that’s something to consider. But I do recommend putting up play Doh when kids are exploring with different shapes. After they have a chance to explore with the shapes on their own, then I do do some explicit teaching because I do need them to learn the names of the shapes and the number of sides that each shape has, because that’s more the defining characteristic, the number of sides and the number of corners.
[00:06:11]:
And so I’ll hold up vocabulary cards that have pictures of the shape, and we’ll talk about how many sides they see, and then we will maybe look for the shapes around the room. That is a really fun way for them to extend their learning of the shape names is by looking for the objects around the room in, like, a shape hunt. And there’s actually a really fun one on Jack Hartman, I think, and Harry Kindergarten, of course. They both have some fun shape hunt songs and movement activities, but I also like to have them give them a little graph paper where they can fill in once they found the shapes around the room. I’ll also do a little emergent reader with them where they are filling in the information of the shape with the number of sides that the shape has. And so it’s connecting the name, the picture, and the number of sides that the shape has. And I love to use books to connect their learning that we’re doing in class. And we even make class books that they go back to time and time again.
[00:07:23]:
They love looking back at their class books, but the class books are all related to the books we read as a class. And so my favorite books about shapes that I read with my students year after year are not a box by Antoinette Portis, the shape of things by Dale Ann Dodds, and mouse shapes by Ellen Stoll, Wash. So I read those every year, and then those sort of launch us into making our own class books about how all the objects around us are made of shapes. And so when we look at something, it’s not just a, you know, triangle. It’s a roof of a house or it’s a chip or it’s a pizza slice. Maybe I’m hungry right now. But they really enjoy making those books, and like I said, they really enjoy looking back at them over the year and seeing what they made with the shapes, but is a fun way to extend their learning of the different shapes and their names and the number of sides that they have. And it also helps them focus on putting shapes together to make designs, because they’ll put different shapes together on the paper to make, for example, like a rocket ship or a carnival or a house, and they’ll see what different shapes they’ve used to make that design.
[00:08:45]:
One thing to mention when you’re thinking about teaching shapes is that as teachers, we often show shapes the same way every time. So we don’t really show, like a right triangle, for example. We always show an equilateral triangle, I think is what it’s called. But where they all have the same side length as opposed to where, you know, you sort of have a straight line going up and a straight line going across, and then the diagonal line across for the right triangle. And so the key feature of a triangle is that it has three sides and three corners and that nothing is open. Right. There’s, everything’s connected. And so something to think about is when you are showing examples of shapes or talking about the different shape names, is to make sure that you’re showing different examples and not just the same kinds of shapes that we show them every time.
[00:09:43]:
So to showing them different types of triangles, different arrangements of rectangles and rhombuses and things like that, and having them sort of build their own rule, being like, these are all triangles, which they all have in common. And then you could even show them what not a triangle, like what an example would be of not a triangle. And sort of show them the two categories and have them build a rule based on that would be a really good way for them to build their knowledge on. Triangles are made up of three lines and three corners, and they’re all connected. Right. And so I do have some examples in picture from a blog post about teaching shapes. I’ll link that below. You can see how I laid out the examples of, these are triangles.
[00:10:36]:
These aren’t triangles. But it was really interesting to see my students, when I started drawing different kinds of triangles, they really didn’t think that they were triangles because they weren’t the example that they were used to. So that’s just something to think about that we want to make sure we’re showing students different types of examples of shapes and not just the same standard examples, and not just examples, but also orientations. Right. Sometimes the triangle, you know, triangle points might be pointing a different direction, and it’s still a triangle. Right. Or the rhombus might be on its side as opposed to going vertical. Just showing them that.
[00:11:16]:
Even a trapezoid, too, they’re always, I think when they think of a trapezoid, they think of the small line on top and the long line on the bottom. But what if it was vertical and the short and long lines were parallel going up and down? It’s really hard to explain this on a podcast and not be showing you what I’m talking about, but I’m hoping I’m making sense. Please send me a DM if you want more examples, or if you just want to let me know that I’m making lots of sense, that would be really reassuring because it’s hard to explain it when you can’t see what I’m talking about. But I do have lots of examples in the blog post that I will link below. So anyway, that’s just something to think about when teaching shapes. The other thing to think about is that a lot of the kids come to you knowing the basic shapes and how to identify them, but extending it further to some of the shapes they might not know, or extending their learning to focus on how they use the shapes to combine together to make other shapes, like how they would put six triangles together to make a hexagon, or how they can put two triangles together and make a rhombus. That’s a good way to extend their knowledge about shapes as well as the idea, as we talked about, of the irregular shapes or putting them in different orientations or perspectives for the kids to still identify as the shape in question, to know that it’s about the number of sides and lines and them being an enclosed shape. One other really fun activity that you can do with students that I forgot to mention is having, like them find partners with cards that matches the literal example of a shape with a picture of an object that is displaying that shape.
[00:13:10]:
So for example, like a picture of a trapezoid matched with a roof where the roof clearly looks like a trapezoid, or, you know, the rhombus with a picture of a card, you know, from the deck of cards that has the diamond on them. And this really helps them connect. Again, the idea of this is the literal shape that I’m learning about in class with shapes are all around us and everything is based on shapes that we see. And it’s also a great way to make partners. So I tend to do this throughout the day, not just in math. It’s a great way to for them to find partners in morning meeting for a greeting. And you can also extend learning, like I said, with the class books that they’re making and the books that you’re reading to them. So really, this shape unit can kind of extend throughout the whole day and not just be siloed into math.
[00:14:02]:
And when that happens, I think that’s when students really have some deep learning going on and they really grow their thinking about shapes. So to kind of wrap it all up, when you are doing a shape unit with students, have them explore with shapes first and encourage them to build on their existing knowledge of shapes through that exploration, but also through showing them different examples of shapes and orientations of the shapes and having them come up with their own rules of what the definition is of a shape, of a triangle, of a square, etcetera. And then help them to see the connection between the literal drawing of the shape that you have in front of you with the objects that are around them in their everyday life, in the classroom, in the world, that everything in the world is made up of shapes, and helping them to see that connection. All of these activities that I mentioned are in my shape unit pack on teachers, pay teachers, and in my website. They not only have 2d shapes, but I also have a whole thing of 3d shape activities included in there. So you can check that out as well. And like I said, send me a DM to let me know that all this shape talks, even though it’s auditory, still made sense to you. That would mean a lot to me, and you can leave a review as well and share it with a friend that you think will be teaching about shapes later and would like to hear the different ideas of teaching shapes with your students.
[00:15:36]:
All right, it’s time for the quote of the day, and this actually has to do with the upcoming holiday of Thanksgiving. So if you’re listening to this live, this quote will make sense to you. But for everyone that is listening live, we will be off next week. Because next Thursday is Thanksgiving and that is a day that you should be enjoying with your family and friends. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, and if you don’t, maybe you have the day off and you can rest and relax. So for those of us that have the day off, I am not going to bombard you with a Kindergarten podcast episode. So enjoy the week off and we’ll catch up the following week. So now for the quote of the day.
[00:16:20]:
We were watching a science movie where the announcer said the male turkeys do a dance for the females and a boy piped up, if I were a turkey, I’d do the best dance ever. So I hope you enjoy your turkey day, your turkey dances, and have fun teaching sheeps with your students. Thanks so much for listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources, or just head straight to kindergartencafe.org for all the goodies. If you liked this episode, the best ways to show your support are to subscribe, leave a review, or send it to a friend. I’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips. See you then!