Tape Shapes

My name is Amanda and I’m honored to be guest posting at I Can Teach My Child. I’m stopping over from Gratefully Growing in Grace where I write about baby, toddler, and preschool activities, as well as crafts, cooking, Christ, and as any good mommy blog includes: cute stories and photos of my children.


I had the idea for this activity almost three months ago and have just never gotten around to doing it with Mini Me, my three year old. I bravely picked a day to finally try it out after a backyard camping adventure with Daddy and before a visit from Papi and Nani. Even with those exciting things on his mind, Mini Me really got into this and, honestly, I was a bit surprised!


This activity was great to practice shapes, numbers, and writing. My plan was to make a shape, count its sides and find the matching number, and practice writing that number.


We gathered our supplies: the foam numbers from our collection of foam letters in the literacy basket, masking tape, our small dry erase board, a dry erase marker and old sock to erase.


First, Mini Me lined up the foam numbers in order.






Next, we used masking tape to tape our first shape to the floor.



Mini Me wanted to walk along the tape shape – a great idea!

Then, we counted the number of sides on the shape and chose the matching foam number.




Finally, we used the dry erase marker and board to write the number of sides on our shape.



I asked Mini Me to choose the next shape to tape on the floor, and he spontaneously turned to our shape window clings for inspiration. A diamond was next!







 We continued to have great fun and ended up making several shapes: a triangle, a diamond, an octagon, a pentagon, and a rectangle.



In addition to walking along the shape lines, we also tip toed and crawled. Mommy hopped along one but sadly, there is no photo of that!



Mini Me did get to play photographer as Mommy wrote the number 8 by our octagon and using the camera was a special bonus.


This was a fun activity for both of us that I’m certain we will revisit. It leaves a lot of room for variation, as Mini Me showed me when he wanted to walk along our tape shape lines. I’d love to hear your ideas for how to expand and change it!

14 Comments

  1. Ok, as a middle school math teacher, there is no shape known as a "diamond." It's either a kite (two pairs of same length sides touching) or a rhombus (all sides the same length) or you could get really generic and just call it a quadrilateral. Sorry but it's my one pet peeve.

  2. I think it's funny how most disagreeing comments are Anonymous. Good thing your son isn't in middle school yet! ;)

    I always love your ideas! I need to work on shapes and I know Evie and Mason would have so much fun with this.

  3. I have a toddler shape book that includes a crescent, a heart, and a diamond. Even if a shape doesn't technically exist in middle school geometry it can still be useful to learn.

  4. I honestly never knew there was so such thing as a "diamond" shape.

    When I work with my son on these things, I rely on books, toys, and content I know he's doing in his two-day-a-week preschool to make my activities. I'm not formally educated in mathematics; my MA is in Spanish teaching.

    However, a word like "quadrilateral" would really be fun to teach him. He likes using big terms like "digestive system" and "Fahrvergnügen".

    Rachel, we have a fun flap book with those shapes, too!

  5. I love this post! Our daughter has shapes, numbers and letters down, but we haven't started writing (she's 2). This is a great way to link it all together. Thanks!!!

  6. How fun! My daughter is a bit young for the number part, but it would be neat to have her help make the shapes and then find things that match that shape (coins for circle, block for square, etc.). For older kids it would be neat to roll dice and make the shape that has the same number of sides as dots on the dice. I love it! Thanks for sharing! ~Amber

  7. ^ Anonymous comment #8, those are great ideas. I love the real-life shape matching and the dice roll and I suspect my son will, too! Thank you so much for sharing!

  8. Amanda,
    Great post! Congrats on guest posting here…this is way bigger than my site! Hope your blog is growing :)

  9. you could also do this with the alphabet( I am thinking of doing that with Monkey since we are working more on the alphabet and counting then shapes right now.

  10. I'm wild about the tape on the floor possibilities — for movement games: inside/outside etc etc.

    What a hoot that a diamond is not a shape! Now I know why I had such a tough time teaching art in Junior High….. and I'm absolutely certain that I got an A in Geometry. It's a good thing I work with young children — where acceptance is an expectation.

    LOVED it!!

  11. Love this! I teach first grade and I am going to try giving groups of two children a role of tape and let them find the lines of symmetry in the shapes. Thanks for the idea!

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