You Better Shape Up: Activities for 2D and 3D Shapes (Including a FREE Set of Anchor Charts)

Shapes are everywhere and we have just about worn them out.  

Over the past couple of years I've noticed a gaping whole in my 2D and 3D shape resources.  I've needed some hands-on centers for our work with shapes.  For whatever reason, I didn't have time to put anything together, until a few months ago.  

I started working on 2D and 3D shapes centers for my young learners.  I wanted to be prepared when our geometry unit rolled around again.

Here's a peek at some of the centers we enjoyed this year...

One of the centers my students completed was a real world/shape match up.  As you can see, student matched real world photos with 2D shapes.  They wrote their findings on a recording sheet.  They also had to find their own examples of shapes in the real world to illustrate and label.

Students worked on naming the 2D shapes and matching up their properties.  Most of the 2D shapes were super simple for my firsties.  However, they certainly needed extra practice with trapezoid, rhombuses, pentagons, hexagons, and octagons.

After a recent pattern activity, I knew some of my young learners needed additional opportunities to work with patterns.  I put together two pattern centers (one with 2D shapes and one with 3D shapes). The pattern centers served as a great review for many of my students and an opportunity for some remediation for others.

Of course we needed some anchor charts to reference.  I love 2 Super Teachers colorful shape friends clip art.  These clips were perfect for creating a simple anchor chart display.

I also put together 3D shape mini anchor charts.  I printed a set of these anchor charts and used them to label our class set of 3D shape models.

I highly recommend getting a class set of 3D shape models.

 I bought my set at Oriental Trading several years ago.  I paid about $20 (or so).  They have been well worth the cost.  It is extremely helpful to students to be able to put their hands on 3D shapes as they learn about these shapes and their properties.

My students used these shape models with almost all of the 3D shape centers.  They used them with the 3D naming and property matching center.

They used the shape models with the stack, slide, or roll center.  Students really liked testing if a shape could stack, slide, or roll.

In addition to labeling our shape models with the mini anchor charts, I also printed a second copy for classroom display.  (If you scroll to the bottom, you'll find a link to a FREE set of these charts.)

All of these activities and many more are available at my Teachers Pay Teachers store in my Shape by Shape {Hands-On Activities with 2D and 3D Shapes} packet.  Altogether there are eight centers with recording sheets, two sets of anchor charts, and a game of I Have/How Has? for 2D & 3D shapes.

You can click on the picture below for more details.

Besides all of our classroom work with shapes, we also read some great shape themed books.  Here are just a few of my favorites...

Captain Invincible and the Space Shapes by Stuart J. Murphy, Shapes That Roll by Karen Nagel, If You Were a Polygon by Marcie Aboff, Perfect Square by Michael, Circus Shapes by Stuart J. Murphy, Friendshape by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns, Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh, and If You Were a Quadrilateral by Molly Blaisdell.
For me, there's nothing like books to hook students' attention and spark their desire to learn more.

Finally, for a free copy of my 3D Shape Mini Anchor Charts.  You can click on the picture below.  If you teach 3D shapes, these colorful little posters make a great reference display and do not take up to much space.

Click on the picture below for your FREE copy of these anchor charts.

Thanks so much for stopping by!
Best.