Use the game of bingo to teach shapes. Students enjoy playing simple games of bingo, and receiving prizes or points for success is a good motivator. Prepare for the game by distributing pre-printed bingo cards to students that have shapes on them. Call out the shape in the order it is drawn from a fishbowl filled with shape cards. Have students place a marker on their card over the shape that is called. Use rocks, poker chips, fun foam pieces or colorful paper squares for markers. Set up the rules of the game before beginning. Use full-card coverage, all in a line, four corners or diagonal to give variety to each round. Reward students with points toward extra play time, small toys or a favorite classroom job. To make the game more challenging as the school year progresses, combine colors and shapes.
Students enjoy creating creatures out of shapes. Use die-cut shapes in a variety of colors and give students the parameters of the project before they begin. Require a certain number and color of each shape in the creature. Let the students take the required shapes and turn it into an interesting and fun creature. Encourage them to be creative and add glitter, feathers and other embellishments to make the creatures more fun. Display the shape creatures on a bulletin board in your classroom.
Holidays are a natural time to use shapes in decorative pictures. Christmas angels, Valentine's Day hearts and Halloween triangles are all good examples of using shapes for holiday decorations. For angel pictures, have students use triangles for skirts and wings, circles for heads and ellipses for halos. Add glitter and other decorations for added fun. Construct Valentine's Day "heart people" with hearts and rectangles. Glue a large heart in the center of a piece of construction paper. Provide students with multicolored rectangle strips and have them fold two different colors together to make two 3-D arms for each creature and glue on either side of the heart. Decorate with googly eyes and colorful lips and hair. For Halloween, have students glue a large orange pumpkin onto a piece of construction paper. Decorate the pumpkins with triangles for eyes and squares for teeth. Add more detail to the picture by making a fence out of rectangles and a moon and clouds out of circles.
Look for free online games (at ideasforpreschoolers.com) that reinforce and review shapes. Games that ask students to choose a particular shape out of a group of shapes is an effective review. Games that use shapes to create interesting designs are also a good option. Use these computer games as a reward system or allow students to use points won in bingo games to get extra shape practice on the computer.