Building Pictures with Shapes

Originally published on SchoolingTinyHumans.com on November 5, 2018

What is it?

Simply put, it’s allowing students to use shapes to create a larger picture.? Think about a house.? You would probably make a square with a triangle on top.? You’ll add square windows and a rectangle door and chimney.? You get the idea.

Having students create the following projects allows us to assess our students’ knowledge of what we’ve previously covered (like patterning) while building on the curriculum (like learning new shapes).? It also is a great bridge between the simpler skills of the beginning of the year and the more difficult ones during the second half of the year.

How do we teach it?

Election Day Posters

For our Election Day unit, we make political posters for each candidate.? I give the tiny humans limited shapes, so there isn’t much to worry about for our first attempt.? They usually get the “easier” one first.? I walk them through it and help them a lot.

The next day, we do the “harder” one, and I let them try it on their own before I start assisting them with it.? After they build the faces each day, I give them the letters to put in order, looking at my model.? This opens up our first discussions on how we use letters to make words and that the order they go in matters!

Thanksgiving Projects

Our Mayflower project incorporates a lot of what we’ve been working on so far this school year.? First, we start cutting out the trapezoid and triangles, continuing to improve our cutting skills.? Then, we made an ABAB pattern for our water.? After, we use the shapes we cut out to build the Mayflower.? Of course, we also discuss the historical significance of this boat.

Then, we try to build a picture without a supporting background.? (Because we are the Pilgrims in our school-wide Thanksgiving Feast, we are very Pilgrim-heavy with our projects.)? The kids cut out the triangle body, trapezoid sleeves, and the face.? The boys also cut the top of the hat.? We provide them with the other shapes that they need to create the image.

Polar Express Project

By the time Polar Express Day rolls around at the beginning of December, the children are more than capable of building their trains without our help.? Since it’s a crazy day, we pre-cut the shapes.? They build them onto the page like the rockstars that they are.

Why is it important?

• ?It’s an introduction to shape identification: “Everyone, pick up a triangle.”? You’ll learn really fast who knows what.? This assessment gears us up for our shape unit.? We also introduce some new shapes, like ovals and trapezoids at this point.? That way they get used to seeing them a few times before the unit starts. ? I find it’s difficult to introduce ovals, trapezoids, rhombuses, and hexagons all at once.? Spreading it out is more effective.
• Building with shapes is a precursor to drawing:? Long story short (if you want to read the long version, click here), we teach them how to “build a picture” with shapes and slowly translate that to drawing throughout the year, especially in our journals.
• It helps develop spatial awareness:? Activities like this help build the “math side” of their brains by teaching them how manipulating shapes to match a model.
• Physically building to get the shape’s placement just right develops fine motor skills:? You know how much we love building fine motor skills!? This is another activity that helps us achieve all our goals for those tiny fingers.
• Bonus!? It can support literacy:? If you add letters to the model, they learn to differentiate the letters from each other.? It also helps them learn that letter order matters when you make a word.? And boy do they like “reading” the word to their parents!

Activities like this may appear to be busy work or “so easy”, but there are a lot of developmentally-appropriate areas that children work on when they do work like this.? And because Pre-K is a transitional year between preschool and elementary school, projects like this help us bridge the gap between mostly play-based learning and more academic-based work in the second half of the year.