Fun Ways Toddlers Can Learn About Shapes

Jun 16

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Over the last few months, I have been working a lot with Pooky on identifying, naming, matching, and sorting shapes. She is quite good with the basic shapes now, so I thought I would share some of the fun ways you can explore these skills with toddlers. (This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.You can read my disclosure statement here.)Create a shape themed sensory bin!I started by focusing on just the circle and then also included the square soon after. The way I officially kicked off our shape "unit" was with a circle sensory bin.Honestly, part of me thought she wouldn't be very interested in this, but it turns out Pooky was very curious about it, and she immediately dug right in! I created this circle bin with stuff I found around the house. It surprised me how much she explored the different textures I included.Eventually she took out several of the circles and began sorting them by color. This gave us the opportunity to talk a lot about the circles (big circles, small circles, different colors of circles, etc...).After a few days of playing with the circle bin, I put together a sensory bin filled with squares, and we talked a lot about them too.Go on a scavenger hunt for shapes!

We hunted for just one type of shape at a time starting with circles.

Play with buttons!

Pooky loves buttons! (As does any other toddler I imagine.) So we have all kinds of different buttons. I love these REALLY BIG BUTTONS because they're durable, educational, bright and fun, and too big to be a choking hazard.

I set up a sorting activity by presenting Pooky with a bowl of circle and square buttons. I also gave her one pipe cleaner with a square button tied onto it and one with a circle button on it. Pooky then had to sort and thread all the buttons onto the corresponding pipe cleaner. This gave her a lot of practice with her fine motor skills, and it also allowed us a lot of opportunities to talk about the shapes and colors.

Play a matching game!

I downloaded this free printable pack from Gift of Curiousity. (If you haven't signed up to receive her emails with the free printable packs, you're missing out!) Then I cut out the pairs of shapes and put one of each in our pocket chart. I gave the remaining shapes to Pooky and showed her how to match them up. By the time I played this matching game with her, I had already introduced all the basic shapes (circle, square, triangle, rectangle, oval, and star) to her.

Make art!

I set up a painting session with the shapes from Pooky's shape sorter set and some tempura paint. I just showed her once how to dip and stamp the shape, and she went to town with it!

Play a variation on hopscotch!

You can read all about our shape themed hopscotch fun here.

Play with blocks!

Pooky loves to build a "great big tower" with her foam blocks. This gives us a convenient time to talk about the different shapes and their characteristics. She has been doing a great job of using the correct names of the shapes as she's building.

Here are some of our favorite shapes toys and books!