Help! Why do children have to learn shapes?

[JoshandJamie]

Can any teachers or clever mums help me? We all teach our children shapes but can anyone point me to some research or article about the importance of learning shapes and patterns? I've searched but can't find anything. Some I've seen say that it helps develop mathematical skills but that's as far as it goes. So does anyone know why learning about shapes is important??

Thanks

Not sure at what level you mean ?! However, surely shapes ands patterns exist all around us , both natural and manmade, and it is important to have frames of reference to describe and construct and for sequencing of action and reaction.

Ha ha about the playstation. You're too right.

i agree that they're everywhere around us and make up the basic components of lots of things but I just wondered if there was some theoretic/academic reason why they are so important.

Thanks for your help so far

So that when they're teenagers they can be bored out of their skulls by learning geometry.

Isn't it something to do with perspective as well? I'm not sure what exactly but I can remember a study which pointed out how children in the city when asked to describe a sunset describe it as a straight line because they have seen it through buildings etc and children in the country will decribe it as arched. I'm not sure if that's relevant but thought i'd mention it.

I'm not sure, is the original post irony or sarcasm ?
Assuming it is for real, there are several reasons for learning shapes and patterns.

If you're into the theory behind this then you may want to google on deep structures. Human thought works on lot on pattern matching, the more patterns you know, to an extent, the brighter you are.
Language in many ways appears to be an adaptation of the brain processes for physically moving things around.

Shapes are a form of pattern. It doesn't really matter all that much if your child does'nt know the name of a trapezium, but it helps him decompose structures if he recognise it as an entity.
Primitive cultures when encountering Europeans had severe problems even working out where objects began and ended. This is strong evidence that our parsing of objects and thus speech is critically governed by cultural limitations.
Most kids will not be exposed to enough patterns in their life unless they are to an extent force fed.
Pattern matching has long been itself a test for the bag of attributes sloppily referred to as "intelligence".
The brain is not "software". We know now that there is very little if any "soft" parts to it's function at all.
It's all physical changes, when you learn something you are making a change to it's state that with a reasonably powerful microscope you could see.
Thus to an extent patterns are a way of making marginal but useful improvements in the intelligence of the child.