Small children may be interested in the kinds of shapes they see from day to day. If you talk about shapes - both flat and solid - it can be a useful exercise in pattern recognition, which is so vital in general mathematical understanding. It also helps their observation and may give a useful foundation for art or technology. Once you start looking, you'll see shapes all over the place! You could perhaps create a list of objects that have regular shapes, or draw them, or make a collage from digital photos.
The
easiest shape to recognise is a circle.
It has no
straight edges, and drawing one accurately is difficult by hand. You
can see circles all over the place: a ring is circular, so is a
biscuit, or a counter in many board games. Wheels are circular too.
An
elongated
circle, as if it's been stretched, is called an oval:
You don't see so many of these in everyday life, but you might have a
bathroom light or mirror that's oval. Actually this shape is
technically called an ellipse;
an oval is a more
general term for anything egg-shaped, so that one side can be fatter
than the other.
Most
shapes, however, are drawn with straight lines. A triangle
is the simplest shape: . This diagram shows an equilateral triangle -
one that has all three sides of exactly the same length. In an
orchestra the instrument called a triangle is a simple piece of metal
which this shape. The word 'equilateral' is from Latin, meaning 'equal
sides'. The word 'triangle' is from Greek, where 'tri' is from the word
meaning 'three'. There are other words using this, such as tripod
(something with three legs) or tricycle (something with three wheels).
You can make triangles that are not equilateral, of course. They can be tall, thin ones or short, fat ones, or totally irregular ones. To be a triangle, the shape simply has to have three sides.
If
you have a shape with four equal and straight sides, it's a square:
This is another regular shape - or polygon,
if you
want to use the official term. Polygon is also from Greek: 'poly' means
'several' (or 'a lot') and 'gon' means 'sides'.
This
is a rectangle
or oblong shape. It's one of the
most commonly seen shapes in everyday life. Look at a curtain, or a
pillowcase, or a table-top, or even a wall. With some exceptions,
they're mostly rectangles. A rectangle has four sides, and four square
corners, but two of the sides are longer than the other two. A square
is actually a specific type of rectangle that has all four sides the
same.
This
related shape is a diamond or rhombus:
If you
squash a square, so that you still have four equal sides but they're no
longer straight, this is what you get. It's also a special
instance of a parallelogram,
which is like a squashed rectangle.
This
five-sided figure is a regular pentagon.
The
word pente- comes from the Greek, meaning five. You don't see many of
these in everyday life, but a child's drawing of a house tends to be
five-sided, even if the sides aren't the same lengths.
A
six-sided figure is a hexagon.
Not surprisingly,
the word hex- is from the Greek, meaning six. Hexagons are the shapes
found in honeycombs. You can divide a hexagon into six equilateral
triangles if you draw three lines from each pair of opposite corners.
There are many more polygons - if you know the Greek numbers, you can usually guess the names of the shapes with that number of sides. A heptagon is a seven-sided figure, an octagon is an eight-sided figure, and so on.
If you're interested in knowing more about angles and how to measure them, see the page on understanding angles. If you'd like to know about the regular solids - cubes and so on - see the page on geometric solids.
For more articles about teaching basic maths without workbooks or drill, see:
Maths
for toddlers
Number
bonds -
beginning addition
Beginning
multiplication
Fractions
for
four-year-olds