One of the first maths concepts that pre-schoolers learn is to identify ‘shapes’. The world we live in is full of shapes. Trees, flowers, mountains, clouds, pebbles and objects we use in our everyday lives, all have their distinct shapes. Even a new born starts to recognise people and objects in its own little world, with Shapes. So, we cannot imagine our world without shapes. And, what better way can it be to conduct a ‘Shape Activity’ for pre-schoolers to help them notice that everything around them has a shape.

After mulling over activities and interactive classroom sessions that would culminate into an interesting learning experience for the pre-schoolers, the pre-primary teachers of Global Indian International School (GIIS) Surat organised ‘Shape Activity’. They engaged the curious children in making different shapes out of ice-cream sticks, rajma seeds and also made them sit in different shapes. Shapes like square, triangle, rectangle, circle, etc. were taught under this activity. By this creative method, the teachers not only taught about shapes but also addressed spatial, verbal, mathematical and interpersonal intellectual capacities of the students.  At the end of the activity, the students were able to distinguish different shapes and categorize various items according to their shapes, colours and sizes.

Thus, the idea that everything has a shape and that shapes are relatively constant in nature was clear to all the students. Until, one of the curious kids put up a tricky question for the teachers to answer that “Why the shape of the moon changes every day?”

Well, now our teachers have some food for thought here.