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‘SHAPES’ RESOURCES

SECTIONS:

• Free sample resources

• Key ‘Shape’ resources

  • Basic 2D & 3D Shapes

  • Exploring shapes in our environment

  • Using shapes for tasks - construction, design, art and craft, patterns, jigsaw puzzles

  • Making shapes with natural items

  • Shapes and ‘Development Matters’

• Additional ‘Shape’ resources within Topics (listed in alphabetical order)

• Relevant pages you may be interested in - Symmetry - Using Shapes for Tasks - Patterns - STEM - Mathematics - Construction

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FREE SAMPLE RESOURCES!

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- Using shapes for tasks (construction - design - art and craft - patterns - jigsaw puzzles)

Please click the text link here or the button opposite to visit our ‘Using shapes for tasks’ page.

Includes using 3D shapes for construction tasks e.g. building blocks & junk modelling and observations of the shape qualities of 2D and 3D items in the world around us to create artwork, patterns and complete jigsaw puzzles.

Birth to 3

• Combine objects like stacking blocks and cups. Put objects inside others and take them out again.

• Build with a range of resources.

• Notice patterns and arrange things in patterns.

• Complete inset puzzles.

Birth to 3 - Examples to support learning

• Provide inset puzzles and jigsaws at different levels of difficulty.

• Provide blocks and boxes to play freely with and build with, indoors and outside.

• Provide patterned material – gingham, polka dots, stripes etc. – and small objects to arrange in patterns. Use words like ‘repeated’ and ‘the same’ over and over.

• Encourage babies and young toddlers to play freely with a wide range of objects - toddlers engage spontaneously in mathematics during nearly half of every minute of free play. Suggestions: when appropriate, sensitively join in and comment on:

• interestingly shaped objects like vegetables, wooden pegs, spoons, pans, corks, cones, balls

• pots and pans, boxes and objects to put in them, shape sorters

• stacking cups: hiding one, building them into a tower, nesting them and lining them up

3 & 4 Year Olds

• Combine shapes to make new ones - an arch, a bigger triangle etc.

• Talk about and identify the patterns around them. For example: stripes on clothes, designs on rugs and wallpaper. Use informal language like ‘pointy’, ‘spotty’, ‘blobs’ etc.

• Talk about and explore 2D and 3D shapes (for example, circles, rectangles, triangles and cuboids) using informal and mathematical language: ‘sides’, ‘corners’; ‘straight’, ‘flat’, ‘round’.

• Select shapes appropriately: flat surfaces for building, a triangular prism for a roof etc.

3 & 4 Year Olds - Examples to support learning

• Encourage children to talk informally about shape properties using words like ‘sharp corner’, ‘pointy’ or ‘curvy’. Talk about shapes as you play with them: “We need a piece with a straight edge.”

• Provide a variety of construction materials like blocks and interlocking bricks. Provide denmaking materials. Allow children to play freely with these materials, outdoors and inside. When appropriate, talk about the shapes and how their properties suit the purpose.

• Encourage children to play freely with blocks, shapes, shape puzzles and shape-sorters.

• Provide shapes that combine to make other shapes, such as pattern blocks and interlocking shapes, for children to play freely with. When appropriate, discuss the different designs that children make.

• Use tidy-up time to match blocks to silhouettes or fit things in containers, describing and naming shapes. Suggestion: “Where does this triangular one /cylinder /cuboid go?”

• Provide patterns from different cultures, such as fabrics.

• Occasionally suggest challenges, so that children build increasingly more complex constructions.

Reception

• Select, rotate and manipulate shapes to develop spatial reasoning skills.

• Compose and decompose shapes so that children recognise a shape can have other shapes within it, just as numbers can.

Reception - Examples to support learning

• Provide high quality pattern and building sets, including pattern blocks, tangrams, building blocks and magnetic construction tiles, as well as found materials.

• Challenge children to copy increasingly complex 2D pictures and patterns with these 3D resources, guided by knowledge of learning trajectories: “I bet you can’t add an arch to that,” or “Maybe tomorrow someone will build a staircase.”

• Investigate how shapes can be combined to make new shapes: for example, two triangles can be put together to make a square. Encourage children to predict what shapes they will make when paper is folded. Wonder aloud how many ways there are to make a hexagon with pattern blocks. Find 2D shapes within 3D shapes, including through printing or shadow play.

• Teach children to solve a range of jigsaws of increasing challenge.