Joy School - Shapes

Our shapes day was great. We have tried to have this day for the past two years, and funnily enough, each time that this lesson has been scheduled kids have been struck down by sickness and we have cancelled Joy School for the week. So we were very happy to have a day to finally have this unit.

Lesson Time: Our host started off her lesson with a brief review of geometric shapes, the number of sides each has, and their names. Then she taught how everything we see is made up of shapes. Shapes are everywhere!

To illustrate her point, she handed out blank white shapes to each child and they moved around the room and taped them to objects that matched, like this oval one child found on the frame of a mirror. We also found that light switch plates were square shaped, the clock face was a circle, the couch cushions were rectangles, etc.

Video Clip: Such a great idea. She showed a clip from Sesame Street, but instead of just having us watch it, she passed out wooded blocks of the shapes, and then when the two-headed monster drew a shape, the children had to find the block that matched and hold it up. They had such fun with this.

More Lesson: She passed out sheets that had three spaces for each shape. In the first two boxes, the kids practiced tracing the shapes on the dotted lines and then in the open area they tried to do it by themselves.

To see how well the kids could do identifying the shapes, and to turn it into a fun game, she had objects in a cloth bag that were all different shapes and the kids had to reach in and identify the shape of an object without looking at it.

My little boy was so excited to find he had correctly identified a circle with no peaking!

Craft Time: We made a shapes mobile. First we took two straws and crossed them in the center and stapled them in that position. Then the kids cut shapes from colored paper and we attached them to the straws with lengths of yarn. Perfect!

Snack Time: We ate sandwiches that were cut into triangles, and fruit snacks that were circles. Big hit.

Art Time: We each got a sheet that had different shapes of various sizes all over it, and we got to color them, cut them out, and make pictures with the shapes. (This was also very good to reinforce the idea that everything is made up of shapes)

Story Time: We read two books. One called 'A 3D Birthday Party' that showed the difference between flat shapes (circles) vs 3D shapes (spheres). Then there was this fun interactive book where we had a wheel to spin until we could find the matching shape of the one in the picture.

Singing Time: We sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and then the Hokey Pokey using the wooden blocks that we used in the video section. So we sang 'Put your triangle in, put your triangle out,' etc and they did the actions with the appropriate blocks.

Wiggle Time: She had two games ready to do. This one used adorable cards that had characters that were made of shapes. She scattered all the cards out, and the children had to find the ones that went together and build the characters by putting the cards together in the right order.

The last thing they got to play with was a shape-sorting toy, which was a good review to have at the end.