Shapes Week for Toddlers - Part 2

Before coming up with the theme of "shapes" for Zahavah, I questioned myself whether or not, this was actually teachable. After all, her brother learned the names of the shapes just by living life fully, playing with shape puzzles and reading some books that had shapes in them.  Then again, Adrian is an intellectual little guy who had no siblings. Toys and books were his life. Z, on the other hand, has a playmate and so she is more entertained but the live toy that is her brother than actual toys so I decided to incorporate the "Shapes" theme into her school year. Here is a sample of some things we did this week.

Cheerios Book

Ah...this book is fun and loved by all I know. It is called "The Cheerios Play Book" (by Lee Wade) and kids must add Cheerios to fill in the indents on the pages. We used the "circles" (Fruity Cheerios) to fill the holes. Regular Cheerios may be less sticky to manipulate though. 

Printing circles with a cork

Zahavah's favorite activity that day. She loves painting and art in general. I squeezed a small amount of blue paint in the dish, put a cork in it, showed her how to get paint on it and how to stamp it onto the paper and then let her experiment with it. I changed the paint color for blue and finally, for yellow later on. She had a blast. 

Turned the circles into balloons with a black pen

Textured shape cards

We've had these cards for a while (made by DK) and both my kids like them. I presented the shape cards to Z and emphasized the shape names while we went through them.

Melissa & Doug's Jumbo Peg Puzzle

Rather easy for Z right now but still nice and simple way to present shapes to a toddler.

I then presented her a more challenging shapes puzzle, also made by Melissa & Doug and to my surprise, she did very well and proceeded to do it over and over again.

Melissa & Doug Peg Puzzle

Melissa & Doug Shape Sorter & Stacker

Well, there is a lot going on with that toy for a toddler but it's a great toy. First, shapes must be sorted, then,  they must be color matched and finally stacked! I made sure I emphasized the shapes but was glad to introduce colors as well as this theme is coming up. Z enjoys this toy and after showing her how to sort and stack, she did it all by herself perfectly twice.

A last post on Shapes for Toddlers is to be expected as we finish up our Shapes work this week.