The World of Shapes

This is how my mind works.  I woke up at 2AM and thought about shapes.  Who even does that?!  Anyway, after I did a post about Shapes - and suggested  some changes to everyday phrases that would help out Kindergarten teachers, like "spaghetti and meatspheres,"  my sweet friend from Teaching in the Tongass shared her fabulous 2D and 3D shape clipart with me.

 

 I must have been so excited about that- that I thought of it all night long.  Here is my story.

Circle, Square, Triangle, and Rectangle are the popular group, known and liked by all. 

Star is really popular, too- and you can't help but love Heart.

 

 

Oval hangs around like a wobbly fifth wheel.

Hexagon doesn't even know how he was chosen for Kindergarten Common Core.  Octagon thought he had the job wrapped up, since he'd won that STOP sign job contract.  (For instance, why is an octopus with his 8 legs advertising this hexagon with 6 sides? He should be a bug, maybe, with 6 legs! See how I look WAY too deeply into everything?!)

 

 Diamond was a sparkly, shiny, Prom-Queen type.

I felt bad that Rhombus was taking over and pushing her out of the Math vocabulary spotlight, but then I looked at it from a different perspective and thought of a scenario much more fitting for Diamond, that I can live with much better.

 

Diamond met Rhom Bus. They fell in love, got married, and she took his name!  TA DA!
Mr. and Mrs. Rhombus!  Hey- if  q and u can have a wedding- so can Diamond and Rhombus, right?

As far as the 3D shapes are concerned, Cone and Cube have it made, thanks to ice.  Ice cream cones and ice cubes did all the work for them. 

 

The pyramid is an old soul.  The Egyptians helped him out a lot.

Cylinder is a good, old  shape, always hard at work in the trenches.

Prisms bully their way into every shape!  Rectangular prisms and triangular prisms- then octagonal prisms and pentagonal prisms.  Enough already! 

And calm down, Sphere, with all of your extra sounds.  He acts like the world would stop spinning without him.  OK- that's a bad example, but ...  maybe knowing that some of my kids called him a "fat circle" would bring him back down to earth.

Cuboid is kind of the "nerd" of the shapes.  He tries to be accepted wherever he can, and he desperately wants to be used one day in a real conversation.  I can't bring myself to help him out with that. 

So- that was all going on in my head at 2 AM.  Maybe I need more interests- or more Tylenol  PM...

On to some helpful things...

Here are some of my  favorite shape books to use with my kids. 

I also LOVE  this Solid Shape Sort from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten.  It is FREE and my kids have so much fun when we use it.

 

I also love and use Deedee Wills'  Math Fluency Pack all the time with my kids.  It is free at her TPT store, and such a great tool to work on fluency with all math concepts. 

 



After we learn and review all of our 2D and 3D shapes, I send home a Shape Treasure Hunt for the kids to do at home.   It's a great way to get the parents involved, and to let parents know the shapes we are learning in class.  If you would like a copy of it, just click on the picture below!

I have little prizes for the kids when they finish.  I have gotten shape books from the Dollar Store, or a bag of different shaped prizes- like a sphere superball, cylinder of Smarties, a rectangular pad of paper...

I put together my favorite links to activities and videos for each of the 22 Kindergarten Common Core Math Standards.

I made four Prezis that I put together as a Kindergarten Math Common Core Prezi Bundle at my TPT store.  The four are Counting and Cardinality/Base 10; Measurement and Data; Geometry; Operations and Algebraic Thinking.  Here is a sample of the K.G.A.3 Standard(Identify shapes as two-dimensional (lying in a plane, “flat”) or three-dimensional (“solid”) on my Geometry Prezi, so you can see what they are like.  This is just one of the 22 standards. These have been so helpful for teaching, re-teaching, and RTI. 


Have fun with shapes. Thanks for stopping by!