How to teach shapes

[JustRichmal]

There was just a spam thread on this subject, which got deleted. Having got a post together, I thought I would open a new thread and post any way. So this is what I did to teach dd shapes:

Cut out shapes from bright card, fairly large. Put them at one side of the room then ask dd to bring me a shape. Then count the edges or corners or comment on something about it to see if she has it right.

Made smaller shapes from black card and decorated them with glitter.

Made 3d shapes from the 3d model nets on SEN teacher.

Did brightly coloured drawings of shapes and talked about lines of symmetry, rotational symmetry and planes of symmetry in 3d shapes.

Played "What shape am I?", which is basically trying to guess a shape using yes/no answers. (Useful for car journeys).

Asking her to imagine 3d shapes and count the corners, faces or vertices or planes of symmetry.

We also used the Letts books which have a page on the right name for shapes, etc. By reception she was using words like "cylinder", knew the difference between a circle and a sphere and could answer "infinite" when the teacher asked how many edges a circle had.

She still sees maths as fun and is doing further maths as one of her A levels.

Please feel free to add ideas, but not spam.

Not being snarky, but isn't that they kind of thing they just pick up, like colours? Obviously you can talk about them together as they come up.

Nursery just told my (admittedly fairly switched on) 4yo the names of 3d shapes one day.

If you can pick up a shape it is a 3D shape and not a 2D shape.

So you cannot 'cut out' a triangle as you'd then be able to pick it up and it would become a triangular prism. Likewise a circle would become a cylinder etc.

You need to draw the 2D shapes on card, so the pupils pick up the card with the 2D shape drawn on, if you see what I mean.

Eh? That all sounds rather try hard. Mine just learnt then organically.

Teach them the names but leave rest until year1&2 when they will learn the properties of shapes i.e edges, faces, vertices.

Is this serious?

I suppose I was just someone who saw my child's education as my responsibility rather than the school's. I enjoyed teaching her and she enjoyed learning. If you want to leave it to the school, that is fine, but I am happy that I taught her. I am not advocating hothousing, just a few bits of learning through play here and there. I am of the opinion that education makes a difference to their ability, which I know is not a popular idea on MN where children are born at a certain ability level and nothing can be done about it.

It’s not so much that op. It’s just a bit patronising.

I don't think that the op meant it to be patronising. She was just sharing some ideas. And kids don't always just pick these things up. I tutor maths and some teenagers still find it hard to remember which is a pentagon and which is a hexagon. Practice in visualising 3d shapes from 2d representations is also really useful.
Then, loads of secondary students find things like the connections and differences between parallelograms, rectangles, rhombuses and squares really tricky. Early practice in identifying these is really useful!

Oh, and don't get me started on trapeziums!

Thank you EducatingArti . I was not trying to be patronising, though I suppose it would have made more sense tagged on to the deleted thread where there was some existing discussion of how to teach shapes.

I do think there are those who did not get on with maths at school and do not want to pass the dislike on to their children, but do not know where to start. So I was just sharing ideas which worked with dd.

How I taught shapes:

Got kiddy shape books from the library
Went on a mad rant when they contained the word ‘diamond’
Drilled into them the word ‘rhombus’

Unless they're very behind and struggling things like shapes are better picked up naturally as you go, like any other kind of vocabulary really.

Gosh OP, I have to agree with pp, that’s all really really over the top.
Far more good for you and your dd to go for a walk and talk about things you can see. Just enjoy spending time with her, she will flourish with the confidence and love you instil in her.

@noblegiraffe is there something about diamonds that upsets you?
And why are rhombus’s important?

Honestly your post throws up way more questions that answers?

My DS learnt all his shapes, including 3D ones, from YouTube videos

If your child is young enough to being reading kiddy shape books then it's perfectly fine to use the word diamond, a rhombus has a particular mathematical meaning that a 2/3 year old really doesn't need to worry about (and it'll take them 2 seconds to learn that meaning anyway). I have a PhD in maths so am by no means sloppy!

"Unless they're very behind and struggling things like shapes are better picked up naturally as you go, like any other kind of vocabulary really."
I suspect that a lot of parents think this which is why secondary teachers throughout the land are tearing their hair out because a certain proportion of their students just haven't ' got' the basic shape info.
If you don't want to help your child with shape learning, then that's fine. Your child may be one of the ones who learns it all naturally.
If you want to support your child in this then ops ideas could be fun!

then it's perfectly fine to use the word diamond

Argh!

@Middledistancerunner I’m a maths teacher. ‘Diamond’ is not a mathematical shape and they will lose marks on their maths GCSE if they think it is. The shape that a kid thinks is a diamond is usually a rhombus. The amount of maths tests I’ve marked over the years where the kid has answered ‘diamond’ leads me to believe that any kiddy shape book using that word should be burned, its ashes blown out to sea, and all evidence that it ever existed deleted.

It’s the only way.