How do you build spatial reasoning, critical thinking, and problem solving skills while doing something that is fun? With tangrams! In honor of Chinese New Year, this lesson introduces your students to the Chinese puzzle of tangrams.

Use a scavenger hunt, art activity, and stickers to help kindergarteners understand shapes and positional language.

Students will explore geometric shapes by creating a painting of a trapezoid.

Students will love composing shapes using tangrams in this hands-on lesson! Use this plan alone or as a support lesson plan for the Tangrams: An Ancient Chinese Puzzle lesson plan.

Sorting takes on a new challenge for students in this activity which engages their critical thinking skills. As students determine defining attributes, they’ll figure out what makes a shape a shape!

2D shapes are all around us! In this lesson students will explore the properties of four different shapes—triangles, circles, rectangles, and squares! They will learn that they can find these shapes anywhere in the world around us.

Use this lesson to introduce the concepts of capacity and volume with young learners. This hands on lesson can be used as a scaffolded pre-lesson to Capacity Comparison.

It’s magic! In this lesson, students will “magically” move shapes together to form new shapes. Clay and toothpicks equal hands-on fun! Tangram challenges are provided for those students who need that little extra challenge.

Geometry is a core of mathematics in the early years. Help students recognize and draw shapes given specific attributes such as the number of corners and sides. This lesson can be a stand-alone activity of paired with 2-D Shapes!

Look all around! We can find 2D shapes inside 3D shapes wherever we go! In this lesson, students will sort shapes and recognize the 2D components of common 3D shapes.

In this lesson, your students will become familiar with shapes by identifying them in real life. Your students will love identifying how many sides shapes have by drawing and counting them!