Teaching your child about shapes and colors is greatly important. This knowledge manifests in their daily life. It helps:

Improving the verbal communication: by providing them the exact descriptive vocabulary we are offering an opportunity to communicate more effectively. By that we avoid their frustration of being unable to ask for a specific thing. ex: “i want the blue car not the red”, “i like the square biscuit more than the round one”…

Building up the logic skills: do you know that when your kid is able to build a balanced lego tower, means he is making use of his geometry skills?

Improving pre-reading skills: Children will apply the same skills that they used in recognizing circles and squares to recognizing and naming all of the letters, as letters are just more complicated shapes.

Being creative: the knowledge of shapes and colors will help them to create what they imagine in their minds when drawing or creating shapes with playdough…. Also the use of colors can express feelings and emotions that young children may not have the words to describe. Ex: using the color red to express anger.

Teaching perspective: realizing that shapes not only exist in flat form on paper but as objects in everyday life, will give them a new perspective of their surroundings.

First comes recognizing the shapes and then drawing, tracing or coloring them is a plus. And maybe building 3D shapes in an advanced stage.

I created series of cards for the most common shapes that a child will encounter in his daily life (square, rectangle, circle, oval, triangle, heart, star…..). Total of 12 colorful shapes with animals, to make it more fun. This way we are learning shapes, colors and animals.

Click on french cards or english cards to download a high resolution file.

As Nady loves singing, we were spending time on each animal to sing a related song and name its benefits.

We played 3 games with these cards:

Game 1: Tracing the shapes with colored pencils

A smart way to enhance his motor skills and practice the pre-writing ability by learning how to hold the pen and draw, beside naming the colors and the animals

Game 2: Making the shapes out of playdough

This game couldn’t end without using the cutters! The favorite activity of Nady 🙂 We found a way to make it beneficial, by cutting same animals to make assimilation!

A great way to build fine motor skills while the child rolls out the dough to trace around the shapes while learning the shapes, colors and animals.

Game 3: Coloring inside the lines

A different type of exercise, teaching a tough skill that needs time, drawing inside the lines! My son is a reluctant artist, he doesn’t like to follow rules he wants to be a free! Without forgetting that this exercise aims also to learn shapes, colors and animals.

We had a new experience each time we played with those cards. The sky is the limit. You can create your own games depending on what is your aim from the exercise.

Don’t forget playing and having fun is very educational! Enjoy every moment with your children, they are precious.

This is what i call a way to play! If you like this post give it some likes and shares to spread the fun. Don’t forget to like marmite et ponpon facebook page and follow on twitter. More interesting posts are yet to come.