I occasionally go to the library and just LOOK around for better ideas to teach my toddlers. One such day I was looking at all types of shape books and just happened to come across this gem! It is called "Shape Capers" by Cathryn Falwell - it rhymes, is fun and engaging for toddlers but best of all they have a repetitive line that can easily be made into a game AND they make all their shapes into different things at the end of the book - and if you are a teacher you are already on the same page - instant art project!!
This is exactly what I did. I read the book to my kids. Then I made this handmade "Shake the Shapes" game which can easily be made out of any cylinder container (I made mine out of a chocloate covered pretzel container from Christmas). (In the middle of the container I covered it with a solid color paper and then wrote with sharpie on the front "Shake the Shapes".) I said the repetitive line of "shake, shake, shake, shake the shapes" and then asked what shape will ______ pull out? And then I let each child in turn pull out one shape from my jar and we had to identify what shape they pulled out!
When we were done with all that I used the picture from the book to make the spaceship out of the shapes we learned about. The kids loved seeing their art next to the picture in the book. It helped them relate and brought the book to life!
It was a wonderful resource and after returning my copy to the library I purchased one to keep in my classroom! If you are teaching your toddler shapes (or are a toddler teacher like me) I highly recommend this book to you!
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