Welcome back to the Kinder Club blog! Each week we will focus on an early literacy concept and share fun stories, activities and tips to help reinforce a variety of kindergarten readiness skills.

This week’s concept is shapes!

Recognizing shapes is one of the first steps in building math skills. Knowing the different names and features of each shape helps with many other school skills such as size difference, patterns and problem solving just to name a few!

Look at the shapes in the image above. How many do you recognize? Count the sides on the green triangle. How many did you count? How about the orange square? What about the blue circle? You are right! A circle has no sides. We tried to trick you!

When learning shapes, it is helpful to think about things you see every day whether at home or outside. For example, a Cheerio is the same shape as a circle. A slice of pizza might be shaped like a square or a triangle. The most popular shape you see while riding in the car is an octagon because that is the shape of a stop sign!

Last week Mrs. K. shared stories about numbers and counting with you. Can you guess what this week’s story is about? That’s right – shapes! Click on the link below to listen to Mrs. K. read The Crayola Shapes book by Mari C. Schuh.

Thank you to Lerner Publications for allowing us to share this story with you.

Mrs. K. had a shape crown in her Kinder Club packet this week. Do you remember what shape was written on her crown? You can make your own shape crown or headband this week. Grab a piece of construction paper and have a grown-up cut it into 2 or 3 strips of equal size. Next glue, tape or staple your strips together to make one long strip. For the next part, you can either draw one shape over and over and write the name of that shape OR draw different shapes on your headband. Finally, have your grown-up fit your crown around your head and secure it with tape or a staple.

If you picked up a Kinder Club practice packet from the library, have fun completing this week’s activities and stay tuned for our next activity post.

Kindergarten Readiness Tip: Shapes can be found EVERYWHERE! See how many things you can find this week that are shaped like a:
CIRCLE
RECTANGLE
HEART
DIAMOND
OCTAGON

What other shapes did you find? What was your favorite object you found this week? What shape was it? What color was it? Did you find anything that you could eat?