Help your Child with Shapes and Objects
Your home is the perfect place for your child to practise the maths they learn in the classroom. It is important that your child develops strong images in their mind of shapes and objects and how best to describe them.
At a young age, children will learn the names of regular shapes such as ‘triangle’ and ‘square’. The next step is making and drawing shapes – this will help them develop ideas about shapes and objects.
Here are a few ideas for activities you and your child can try:
- read to your child and talk about the shapes you see in the pictures, such as the roof, which could look like a triangle.
- involve your child in craft activities, such as making your own gift wrapping and using different objects like corks or sponges to stamp colours and patterns onto the paper.
- make shadows on the wall with your hands and objects and discuss the shapes you can make.
- create your own jigsaw puzzle by cutting up a page from a magazine into four or five pieces and joining it together again. This will get your child thinking about the shapes of objects and how they fit together.
- play I Spy games with your child and give clues such as ‘I see something that looks like a big square’.
If you would like more information about how you can help your child with shapes and objects, ask his/her classroom teacher or visit http://education.qld.gov.au/parents/map/
