Shapes is the one set that teaches two subjects at once, because children in Grades 1 to 3 meet geometry in maths at exactly the same time. An English teacher who picks up this set is revising maths for free, and a maths teacher who slips in the English words is giving that vocabulary another outing. The children meet the same words from two directions, and that is the best memory formula there is.
The word list, and the order to teach it in
- The core four: circle, square, triangle, rectangle. That is plenty for Grade 1.
- Extension for Grades 2 and 3: star, heart, oval, diamond. Each one links easily to something real, a star in the sky, a heart, an egg, a jewel.
- A pronunciation tip: children tend to flatten triangle into three Thai syllables. Tap out three beats while pointing to the three corners of the shape, and they lock in the sound and the meaning in one move.
Hunt for shapes, then build something out of them
Open with a game: Find a circle! Children point at the clock, a plate, the wheel on a chair. Every classroom is already a warehouse of shapes. Then comes the making. Hand out coloured paper cut into shapes and let children paste them into a picture: a house from a square and a triangle, a car from rectangles and circles. When they are done, they label how many of each shape they used. I used three circles. One activity, and you have covered art, maths and English together.
Close the unit with worksheets that match shapes to words and count the shapes hidden in a big picture, which drags the numbers set back in for revision along the way.