Luckily, it’s easy to find nonexamples to discuss in everyday life. Nonexamples are highly visually similar to a type of shape but lack at least one defining attribute. Talking about diverse shape examples along with nonexamples can go a long way to help children understand what defines a shape-what makes a triangle a triangle, for example. As a result, children may not recognize isosceles and scalene triangles as triangles because they look “stretched out.” Children may say that a triangle with a vertex pointing down is “upside down.” Watch a small group discussion about “upside down” triangles during a preschool activity called Feel for Shapes. Most children’s books present triangles as equilateral (3 equal sides) and oriented to sit on a horizontal base. So it’s up to us to find, share, and talk about a variety of shapes with children in ways that expand their understanding and build connections between shapes (think, how is a square a special case of a rectangle?) and connections between the shapes drawn on paper and the concrete objects in our world. And these shapes are usually presented in only one typical way so that children often develop rigid and fixed notions of what shapes must look like. In fact, the majority of emphasis gets put on just four shapes: circles, triangles, rectangles, and squares. ![]() Though we live in a 3D world, common language and materials used to teach children about shapes focus on 2D shapes. ![]() ![]() Long before children have language to name or describe these different types of shapes, they develop intuition about which shapes roll, how a flat surface feels, and that “corners” are pointy. They informally learn about the properties of 3D shapes as they mouth, touch, and play with blocks, balls, and other objects in daily life. Children explore the everyday shapes in their environment from birth.
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