Kate's Nativity Craft

Kate did a great job with this Nativity craft last weekend.  I wasn't sure if she would be interested in it, or if she would be able to glue the shapes where they are supposed to go, but I showed her where each shape went and she did great gluing them in place.  It was a nice opportunity to talk about shapes!

The Greedy Triangle

The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns is about a triangle that gets tired of doing the same old things, so it visits the shapeshifter to ask for one more side and one more angle.  Unfortunately, being a quadrilateral soon grows old and the triangle returns to the shapeshifter again and again for more sides and more angles.  Eventually, the triangle realizes that life as a triangle was pretty good and returns to the shapeshifter to rediscover life as a triangle. 

We enjoyed reading this book.  I always like to see books for children exploring the lesson of the grass not being greener on the other side.  This is also a great introduction to polygons.  C and R counted the sides on triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, heptagons, octagons, nonagons, and decagons.

R did a fun art project inspired by this book.  Using masking tape, I attempted to make an entire paper of polygons for R to paint.

She loved painting the shapes different colors.  When the paint dried, I carefully pulled off all of the masking tape and she had a beautiful piece of art.  R was so impressed with herself!! 

I really like the way this came out.  This is one art project we will definitely try again.

I am linking this to stArt at A Mommy's Adventures.

Circles

Challenge your child to draw something using only one shape and see what he or she comes up with.  If I had to draw something using only circles, I would draw a snowman.  C obviously has much more creativity in his little five year old self than I do!

He even made the mouth out of circles.  I was very impressed. 

If you try this with your child, please let me know what he or she creates!

Mouse Shapes

C and R love the little mice featured in Mouse Shapes, Mouse Paint, and Mouse Count by Ellen Stoll Walsh. We have been reviewing shapes this week so Mouse Shapes came off the book shelf. The three little mice are running from the cat when they bump into a pile of shapes and realize they can make many different pictures out of shapes. They have a lot of fun with this and even manage to scare the cat away with their shape pictures.

After reading the book, I gave C and R some shape foam stickers that I found at the dollar store. There were no circles in the package so I also gave them each a sheet of color coding labels in assorted colors (3/4 inch circle stickers from Staples). They each made their own creations with shapes and we talked about the different colors and shapes while they worked. I expected R to name each shape correctly and expected C to explain the differences and similarities between the shapes and also be able to describe or define each shape.

This is R's shape creation. When I asked her what it was she said, "Shapes!" Silly mommy.

This is C's shape creation. He said it is a battlefield that he is going to visit with Dad someday.

We also had a shape scavenger hunt. I called out a shape and they would look around the house for objects of that shape. We took our scavenger hunt out on the town and used these awesome traffic sign scavenger hunt sheets from flipflops and applesauce. The traffic sign scavenger hunt was a great addition to our house scavenger hunt because there were a few shapes that we had trouble finding in our house.

C and R enjoyed making shape cupcakes. I have no idea why C looks so upset in this photo.

C's cupcake looks more like a pizza, but that's ok. He didn't want to decorate the wrapper.

We have been working on shapes everywhere - even in the driveway.

As soon as I publish this post, we are going to have more fun with shapes while playing Cranium Hullabaloo.

Thanks for reading!