Learning Shapes for Toddlers

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Vito’s sensitive years has begun and he’s been learning a lot since I last posted his 21 months learning materials! With his current interest in letters and shapes,  Vito and I has been doing lots of play-based learning in the morning before his nap time.  Now this doesn’t take hours.  It’s a maximum of 10 minutes per learning material that he picks. 

So far he can recognize the following shapes:

triangle

circle

oval

square

star

He can’t pronounce their names properly though (except for star and circle), but yes he can say their names in a toddlerish cute way.

So here’s a summary of what we’ve been using to name and recognize shapes.

Melissa & Dough Jumbo Shape Puzzle

This is his favourite! He works on this everyday.  Working on this board, you need to say the name of the shape of the puzzle holder, and point to its match (say also its name) and then place the puzzle in the board.

This is available from here.

Playskool Shape Sorter

This toy has been on the shelf for ages!  I first made him use square, star and circle.  Then added oval and diamond and now, he has mastered half of the shapes!

This shape form fitter is available here.

Cookie Cutters and Playdough

The cookie cutters were bought from the local store. I love the colors and the differential sizes!  This is similar to the cookie cutters that I have.

And this is how he forms a star and a square all at the same time!

And yes, we do get to use them as stencils too!

 

Miniland Shape Sorting

This is one of my favourite purchases this year.  I love that we can do lots of things with this, from color and shape sorting, lacing and counting!  This is not his favourite pick though, so we might NOT be working on this for the meantime.  This Miniland Abacus Shapes can be bought from here.

Gluing Shapes

We stopped using glue because Vito didn’t like it.  Now that he’s a lot bigger, I re-introduced it once again and he’s not afraid of it anymore!  This is just a simple activity of sticking shapes into an art paper using buds. 

As you can see, I’m teaching him how to apply glue on a piece of paper

And he placed them on the paper of course, but on the wrong side and added some more glue on it!

 

Melissa and Doug Pattern Blocks

And the newest addition is this learning material from Melissa and Doug.  This is quite popular and the boys love it! Yes, not only Vito but Mavi is using it too!  Worth-it if you have multiple kids    Vito has been practicing this fish as he can recognize the triangle and oval right away.  He know what shape it has by picking the right blocks, but he still can’t fit them properly on the picture.  We’ll be playing more of this!

You can this from here.

And that’s about it! Hope this will give you an idea of materials and activities when learning shapes with your kids!  Don’t forget to pin this for later!