Invite kindergartners to help make a classroom shape museum. Provide magazines for students to cut out two-dimensional shapes such as circles, ovals, squares, rectangles, triangles, hexagons and octagons. Encourage students to look around the room for three-dimensional shapes such as spheres, cones, cylinders, pyramids and prisms. Extend the activity to bring in shapes from home to add to the museum. Encourage students to sort, classify and discuss the shapes they have found.
Provide geoboards and rubber bands for kindergartners to make two-dimensional shapes. Students can make triangles, squares, rectangles and various other polygons. Have students count the number of sides on their creations. Extend the activity to have students draw the shapes they made and place on posters labeled "triangles," "squares," "rectangles," "pentagons," "hexagons" and "other polygons." Count the number of sides for different shapes and discuss how polygons have straight sides.
Play "I Spy" games using geometric shapes. For example say, "I spy something with three sides." Students then try to guess what triangle you see. Allow students to take over saying "I Spy" when they are ready to describe shapes by their name or number of sides. Play "Shape Race" with your class. Have kindergartners start in the group area, then call out a shape to find. Give students one minute to find as many examples of that shape as possible. For example, have students race to bring back things shaped like a sphere. Allow students to share their examples with the class and tell why it is a sphere.
Set out pattern blocks for kindergartners to explore. Allow them to sort the blocks by shape or number of sides. Let students put shapes together to form new shapes. For example, six triangles arranged in a circular manner form a hexagon. Four squares placed together can yield a larger square, a long rectangle or a polygon shaped like the letter "L." Allow students to make larger designs with the pattern blocks such as flowers, boats, snakes and animals. Compare designs to see what shapes certain designs have in common.