Ah, I think I might have accidentally made this into one of the easiest subjects to teach:
WARNING: DO NOT PRESS PLAY (unless you want this song in your head all day!)
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There are a couple of things to keep in mind when teaching shapes. The first is, of course, to try not to teach it unless you have to! For really little kids (2 and 3 year olds) it can be fun, but for older kids it’s usually pretty useless language. That said, I’m sure the song above will make it cute and funky if it is included in your textbooks!
The second point, and I’m putting my science teacher head on here, is to make sure that these words are only for 2D shapes i.e. a football isn’t a circle and a Rubik’s cube isn’t a square. (I’m pretty sure you all know that but I’ve seen them used as questions in so many kindergartens!)
There are also a few technical things which are difficult when making visuals for shapes e.g. an oval shouldn’t be an ellipse and a diamond, like a square, has four equal sides.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the song, it’s certainly stuck in my head. And the reaction to the faces on the shapes is proving really good so far!
But what do you think? What are your favourite games & ideas for teaching shapes? Write up in the comments and you might just win a CD – November’s comment competition has just begun!
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awesome!
Catchy tune! I am sure my kindergartens will love this one!
For games with shapes I have done the “Missing Card”. After teaching all the shapes, and the kids know them pretty well,the cards are places on the follr in front of them. They all have to close their eyes, while I remove one of the card and mix the others around. They then open their eyes and try to find out which card is missing. When they get good at this, I remove 2 cards, then 3. My kindergarteners really like this game.
Great song!
I’ve taught shapes (square, circle, rectangle, and triagle) mixing them with feeling (happy, sad, angry and hungry) and obviously colors.
I draw people or monsters and the body has the shape…so they’re called
Mr. Square (red, angy) Mr circle( yellow, happy) etc. Sometimes I invent stories with them….The kid love it!
Have a nice day!
Nena
Richard, you’ve ruined my day. I can’t get that bloody tune out of my mind. I will have to see a hypnotherapist.
Cute song. I agree with Nena about using shapes and colors to make monsters. Another idea is to have students look at monsters drawn in black and white and have the kids color: the triangle is red (and combine with body parts, the red triangle is the nose)…
super Richard….
It’s great as everything you do Richard.
I usually give each child one oreo biscuit (it’s round) and three “lacasitos”, they are round too. So they make a face ( the lacasitos are the eyes and mouth) and I say it’s round like a circle. If they kown the word “circle” and they can recognice the circles, they can eat it or some of them want to take it at home.(everyone learn it, because they love these biscuits too much)
The square is like a sandwhiche and the triangle is like the half of a sandwhiche with chocolate cream on it.They spread the chocolate cream on it repeating the word square, then they cut it out doing the same.
we make a train with rectangles (red,blue…)for the wagons and circles for the wheels.I give each child a rectangle and each one place glue it to male the train.
I take pictures of them and I make squares and they glue their pictures on his/her wagon.We do feedback with the train.
Thank you for all the halloween materials you give us.
(In halloween I used the oreo biscuits for making spiders too).They loved it a lot. It’s not expensive.
For teaching shapes, you can do sooo many games. I made two groups and had them sing the hide and seek song. One half of the class counted to ten (numbers), the others hid a shape each in the classroom. Then the first group got 20 seconds to find all the shapes and name them.
I also did dancing chairs, and they have to name the shape that is under the chair before they can sit down.
You should also try KABOUM: put all the shapes in a bag, decide on a shape that is the bomb (for instance: the circle). Then a child takes out a shape. If it’s the circle, everybody says KABOUM!! You put the circle back in and continue. The little ones love this!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Can’t get it out of my head. Maybe you should repeat the “lots and lots of shapes” part in the middle, then it would become even more intriguing.
To teach shapes I provide each child with an approx. 20 inch piece of rope. Then I demonstrate how the rope can be bent to form a variety of simple shapes. Then I let the children form shapes for themselves for a little while and just comment on what they do. Then I call out a shape’s name and ask them to form the right shape. Afterwards I let them take turns forming shapes and challenging the others to create the same shape.
I would like to download just the shapes song – how bout throwing another bone to the vip members? or let us download just one song if we are already a member please
Hi Ryan,
Sorry about that, yeah you’ve got to be quick to get the worm! But …. with this particular song, keep a sharp eye on the blog over the next couple of weeks, there might be a nice surprise!
Awesome. Genki English rocks