Click here to read 12 Shape Activities for Toddlers! It’s Hip to be Square! on Hands On As We Grow®
1. Shape Categories Game
Put various objects in a basket of various shapes or forms in front of your toddler and allow them to sort in shapes. Use simple prompts such as:even you can find the circles.” Expand “drem 39 mixaur Republicans are swimming in the first-order reds, this writer is in the second-order greens, and the end of this line is in the third-order blues. This activity develops early problem – solving and sorting skills.
2. Hunt Around the House
Make it a play shape house! Take a walk and challenge your toddler to locate real-life objects that will fit into a certain shape such as the round clock, rectangular door, or square pillow. It is an excellent format to bring learning into reality.
3. Shape Collage Craft
Cut out various shapes out of colored papers and allow your toddler to use as a gluing paper to create his/her own masterwork. Make them name the shapes as they lay them. This enhances imagination and shape detection.
4. FitShapes Puzzle
Wooden/foam shaped puzzles are great in toddlers. They improve the fine motor standings of children and they make children realize how each of them can fit together. Learn simple circle, squares, and triangles and later advanced designs.
5. Shaping with Sponges Modeling with sponges
Make sponge shapes and soak them in paint and allow (your little one) to stamp on a piece of paper. It is a playful, sloppy, and arty kind of way to teach shapes and boost hand-eye coordination.
6. Playdough Learn to discount
Playdough and shape cutters can help your toddler create circles, squares and stars. Not only is it a sensory activity but also the practice of identifying and making forms on their own.
7. Shape Hopscotch
Place large shapes on the floor by means of tape or chalk and invite your toddler to jump between the shapes. Call out the instructions such as the one presented above as “Hop to the triangle! This brings motion and learning is fun and full of life.
8. Shape Storytime
Read shape books that emphasize shapes, like the “Mouse Shapes” by Ellen Stoll Walsh or even the “Shapes, Shapes, Shapes” book by Tana Hoban. Storytime enables the toddler to identify shapes with the image and enhances the word definitions and understanding.
9. Shape blocks in the constructions
Give your toddler various kinds of blocks and ask your toddler to create something. This increases spatial awareness, imagination and problem solving capabilities.
10. Shape Matching Cards
Make flash cards with different shapes and objects to match. E.g. use a circle card with a photograph of a pizza. This assists the toddlers to relate the abstract shapes with real objects around them in the world.
11. Eatable Plastic Food Shape Snacks
Provide a creative snack time by slicing sandwiches, fruit or cheese into various shapes. Discuss each of them before drinking them It is an effortless method of joining education with delicious snacks
12. Outside Shape Scavenger Hunt
Get your toddler out and about and see how to identify shapes in nature. watch to see round-flowered plants, triangular-leaf or rectangular-bench shaped. This activity relates shape learning with the natural environment.
- Shapes are something of a challenge to teach toddlers, but Edubox is here to help.
- Start basic Start using simple shapes such as circles, squares and triangles.
- Repeat shapes naming repetitively Repeat the names of shapes several times, this will help you memorize.
- Add movement Toddlers don’t learn well when they have to sit.
- Keep it entertaining Turn classes into activities and crafts.
- These 12 hands on shape activities for toddlers (2 year olds) will make it hip to be square!
- Toddlers will have fun learning shapes in a hands on way.
- We’ve been having a little bit of fun lately doing some hands on shape activities!
George is on a shapes kick right now, anytime he asks for an activity, he’s been asking for ‘shapes’. I can’t say no to that!
I keep the shapes I work on with my toddlers in activities pretty basic.
Usually the square, triangle, circle.
And then I usually sneak in an odd one here and there just to introduce it, like the octagon (my kids seem to catch on to that one quickly because of stop signs), oval and rectangles.
How to Teach Shapes to Toddlers
First comes recognizing the shapes and then labeling them.
These shapes activities for toddlers are perfect for 2 year olds learning to recognize their shapes.
Building and making shapes is a plus for toddlers, as well as drawing and tracing them. This will come in time… preschoolers will be able to start doing this.
12 shape activities for 2 year olds
These shape activities for toddlers are all very hands on and fun, the learning is just a plus!
I tend to stray away from printables and worksheets, so these activities pass my ‘hands-on’ learning test that all get toddlers very involved in learning shapes.
Shapes are fun to start spotting out in your every day lives too! Your two year old will start seeing wheels as circles, and houses as squares.
Make it a challenge when you’re out for a walk to see what shapes you can each spot!
Call them out and have a good time with it.
I bet you can even find an octagon (Stop signs!). That’s a great way to introduce a new shape like that.
For more learning activities for toddlers, check out these 14 activities that focus on shapes, letters, colors and numbers.
There are also tons of super fun books about shapes for toddlers to reinforce what your learning with activities.
Shapes: My First Pop-up! (A Pop Magic Book) by Matthew Reinhart is a super fun one!
Download the FREE Week of Toddler Activities to do this week!
