One of the first shapes a child learns is the circle. Try these simple crafts to reinforce identifying this shape. To make a caterpillar, give a child several different colored circles. Have them glue the circles in a row with the edges touching each other. Draw eyes and antennae on one end circle, and legs on the bottom, and the caterpillar is complete. In winter, children can use circles to make a snowman. Circles can also be glued onto paper to form a teddy bear face or traced onto heavy poster board, cut out and stapled to a drinking straw to make a lollipop.
Pre-cut a small triangle, a medium triangle and a large triangle. Lay the large triangle on its side with the point facing left. This is the fish body. Slide the medium triangle (tail) slightly under the right edge of the large one, just enough to cover the tip of the medium triangle's point. Secure it with glue. Finally, glue the small triangle onto the fish body as a fin. Finish the craft by drawing an eye and mouth on the large triagle. Other triangle crafts include making trees by gluing the triangles in a vertical row. This would also work well at Christmas time; just form the triangles into a Christmas tree shape and let the children decorate their tree.
Make robots with different sizes of pre-cut squares. Separate squares into different sizes, putting each size into a different bowl. Give each child a large sheet of construction paper to use as a background. Instruct the students to glue the squares onto their paper in the shape of a robot. Encourage them to be creative and use at least one of each size of square. They can also combine squares and rectangles in a row to create a train. Add circles as wheels to finish the project.
After a study of basic shapes, use these crafts to supplement the unit. Using triangles, rectangles and squares, ask children to glue the shapes onto a large sheet of paper to create a house. They can then decorate the background as they wish and glue a circle to the top as the sun. Pre-cut many different sizes of circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, ovals and hearts. Tell the children to use the shapes to form an animal. It is a good idea to have a few samples already made and hanging in the classroom for children to model. Make a duck using the oval as a body, a circle as a head and upside down hearts as wings. Create a shape mobile by hanging various shapes with yarn from a large star. Tie each to the ceiling tiles of your classroom for a special effect.