Playing with Shapes

Activity 19

Hunt for Shapes

You might not think going for a walk in nature could lead to math, but it’s true. Math and Nature are very close friends. If you know nature well, patterns, shapes, and numbers can help you pass on what you know about the world around us.

Pick a shape to look for wherever you and your child go for the whole day. Find that shape, wherever it is. For example, if you are looking for circles, notice clock faces, wheels, headlights; another day, if you are looking for rectangles, notice windows and doors, signs, and so on.

Some days, look for a flat shape, such as triangles, rectangles, squares, circles; other days look for a shape that is not flat, such as cylinders (tin cans) and spheres (oranges) and pyramids.

Read a book about shapes, from the list in Appendix B.

 

Activity 20

Make a Picture

Copy the pages of shapes on the following pages on coloured paper and cut them out.

Use the shapes to make a picture by gluing them onto a sheet of paper. Make a picture of an animal, or a person, or your home, outside or inside, or your street or the forest, or anything you want.

When it’s time to put the shapes away, sort them and put them in different envelopes.


Make it harder

Make a picture using only 1 shape in many colours and sizes.