Everything we can see or touch has a shape. Mostly these shapes are too complex to describe, except very roughly: the shell is a bit round; the stairs are straight and they go up at an angle. Some objects have particular names to describe their shape.
It is important for practitioners to make available a variety of examples of different 2D and 3D shapes, such as equilateral triangles and tetrahedrons, squares and cubes, so that children can generalise their properties. It is also important to explore the relationship between 3D and 2D shapes and to look at how the shapes of some faces of an object determine the shape of the other faces.
Children learn about the differences between shapes by playing with them and in them, building with them, drawing around them, combining them, making pictures with them, printing with them, rolling with them, and also by talking about their experiences with adults, who can help put these experiences into words.
Children need to investigate shapes, large and small, manufactured and natural, and get a feel for the properties of these shapes. Rather than just learning the names of shapes, children need to learn about what shapes can and can't do; and which shapes fit together and which shapes don't.
Role play area
Provide resources for creating a packaging company:
- a variety of cardboard boxes of different sizes and shapes
- tissue paper, bubble wrap, brown paper, wrapping paper
- sticky tape and tape dispensers, string, scissors, gummed brown paper strips, ribbons
- address labels, pens and pencils, stamps, rubber stamps with 'Fragile' and 'This way up' and 'Urgent'
- weighing scales and balances for weighing parcels; list of prices for different weights of parcels
- wheeled carts for delivering parcels; maps showing delivery areas
- overalls and caps for packers and deliverers.
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Be confident to try new activities and initiate ideas in packaging
Work together harmoniously in their roles
Use language to imagine and re-create roles and experiences of being a packer and delivery driver
Know information can be relayed in the form of print, for example, on labels
Attempt writing for different purposes, such as writing addresses and delivery instructions
Use language to describe the shape and size of different objects and their packaging
Describe solutions to the practical problems of packaging, drawing on experience
Select the tools and techniques they need to pack parcels
Collaborate in devising ways of moving and stacking packages, including accepting rules of safety
ADULT ROLE
- Set up the idea of a packaging company. Encourage children to suggest what things to include in the area. Work together to set it up, and continue to develop the area as children offer new ideas. Extend the area to the outdoor area to include carts, trolleys and trikes for delivery.
- Invite a local postal delivery person, or someone involved in packaging, to talk to the children and show them problems and solutions about packaging.
- Discuss the purposes of packaging.
- Teach joining, measuring, cutting and finishing techniques for packaging, and introduce appropriate terms, such as 'seal', 'fold over', 'longer', 'shorter', 'flat', 'heavy', 'full', 'empty'.
- Encourage children to teach each other techniques they have learned. Invite children to talk about the order in which they package an object.
- Provide photo instructions about how to pack up a book or other object. Take photos of children packaging at different stages and display these.
- Support the children in making delivery labels.
- Display a grid of numbers to 100, and find familiar numbers on this grid for the delivery labels.
- Ensure children know the rules for being safe while they are moving around stacking and delivering parcels.
- Praise children's efforts when they consider others or collaborate in tasks.
- Ask such questions as:
'This looks like an interesting shaped parcel. I wonder what could be inside it?'
'Shall we put all the heavy parcels in this cart? Are there any more?'
'How can we fold this end of the brown paper to make a neat parcel?'
Science area
Create a 'workshop' in which to explore shadows, by providing:
- thick blankets, blackout curtains and clothes horses for making a dark tented area (this area can be erected outdoors); white screen area inside with large sheet of paper or card
- torches and searchlights
- a variety of objects with interesting shapes, such as a broom-head, a rugby ball, a saucepan
- a light box or an overhead projector, with a basket of various interesting objects and shapes to investigate silhouettes (opaque, transparent and transluscent)
- interactive whiteboard to use as a projector and screen
- multilink, or similar construction material, to make into arrangements and then explore the shadows and silhouettes formed
- shadow puppets; materials for making shadow puppets (card, sticks, scissors)
- frames covered with stretched canvas for children to make silhouette portraits of each other.
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Look closely at similarities, differences, patterns and change
Investigate objects and materials by using all of their senses as appropriate
Use ICT to perform simple functions
Explore colour, texture, shape, form and space in two or three dimensions
Respond in a variety of ways to what they see, hear and feel
Use a widening range of words to express or elaborate on ideas
Match shapes by recognising similarities and orientation
Use familiar objects and common shapes to create and recreate patterns
ADULT ROLE
- Work with the children to set up an area to explore shadows. Encourage children to suggest what things to include in the area. Work together to set it up, and continue to develop the area as children offer new ideas. This can start in the science area and develop in the creative workshop, both inside and outside the setting.
- Encourage children to describe the shapes of the shadows they make.
- Talk about the images and effects they see, such as the way shadows change as you move an object round. Introduce vocabulary to enable children to talk about their observations and experiences: 'smooth', 'spikey', 'prickly', 'curved', 'jagged', 'lumpy', 'hollow', 'outline'.
- Teach children to use the ICT equipment safely.
- Discuss the different shadow patterns children can make with their fingers. Invite children to teach each other how to show a rabbit or a dog shadow with their fingers.
- Introduce canvas-covered frames. Children can use a source of light to project each other's profiles on to the frames, and then draw round them on the frame. Look at Victorian profile silhouettes.
- On the projector, play peek-a-boo, revealing shapes a little at a time and at different angles, asking children to say what they think the shape is, what else it could be, or what it could not be.
- Outside, support children in drawing with chalk around each other's shadows. Try again at different times of day. Support children in measuring how long their shadows are, and whether their shadow is longer or shorter than they are.
- Introduce shadow puppets, and set up a workshop for children to make their own.
- Use silhouette outlines as a way of tidying up distinct shapes throughout the setting.
- Engage with the children through questions and comments such as:
'You nearly made a shadow then by pointing the torch at the mop - I just saw it over there.'
'I wonder what shape you'll get if you turn the whisk round and look at it from the top.'
'What object do you think is making that shadow?'
Construction area
Set up a space in the outdoor area for children to develop as a building site. Make sure that it is coned or roped off from the rest of the outdoor environment and is big enough for large-scale investigative play with ramps, planks, bricks and wheelbarrows. These resources provide opportunities for children to investigate rolling, sliding and gradient. The children will also need space to build large-scale structures and be able to use the wheelbarrows to transport different materials.
In this area, provide:
- protective clothing including hard hats, goggles, overalls, thick gloves, reflective strips
- tools, tool belts, tool aprons, tool carrying bags and boxes
- measuring instruments including long tape rule, trundle wheel, wheel barrows
- collections of bricks - wooden, large plastic
- some real bricks and bag of cement, trowels, and a large spirit level.
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Persist for extended periods at an activity of their own choosing
Interact with others, negotiating plans and activities and taking turns in conversation
Use language to imagine and re-create roles and experiences
Use mathematical words to describe the shape and talk about patterns
Describe solutions to the practical problems of packaging, drawing on experience
Examine objects to find out more about them
Ask questions about why things happen and how things work
Construct with large materials
Show awareness of space, of themselves and of others
ADULT ROLE
- Work with the children to set up a building site. Encourage them to suggest what things to include in the area. Work together to set it up, and continue to develop the area as children offer new ideas.
- Discuss with the children what they know about building and their experiences of building sites. Talk about foundations, scaffolding, and building materials such as bricks, tiles and wood.
- Make a collection of house bricks for the children to examine closely and to feel. Look at the shapes in the bricks and take measurements. Talk about edges and corners as well as the different faces of the bricks.
- Discuss building a brick wall with the children, look at the patterns of bricks at the nearest brick wall and how it is built. Talk about what holds the bricks together.
- Together, make up some real mortar using sand, cement and water, or substitute very damp sand as mortar. Use real bricks and trowels to make a low brick wall. Discuss how to put the mortar on the bricks and show how to use the spirit level.
- Make a block and tackle bucket conveyor by attaching a small pulley to the top of two posts or climbing frame and threading a plastic bucket on to the line. Encourage the children to send buckets of plastic bricks to the top of the climbing frame or across the 'building site'.
- Have a brainstorming session. Ask building experts and look in books to identify the machines that help builders to build houses and other constructions. Mention screwdrivers, hammers, nails, saws, drills, cement mixers, bulldozers, steam shovels, pipe diggers. Talk about different tools and how to use them safely. Emphasise the reasons for using safety goggles, thick gloves, hard hats and heavy boots.
- Collect samples of a range of building materials such as different types of bricks, tiles, wood and pipes. Include hand lenses, and encourage the children to look closely at the different textures of the materials.
- Ask such questions such as:
'I wonder what makes that pulley go up and down?'
'What do you suppose this tool is for? Why do you think that?'
'Which way round are you going to put that next brick to continue the pattern?'
Sheila Ebbutt is director of maths specialist company BEAM. For information visit www.beam.co.uk
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Tuning in
Making time to talk to parents and carers is an important way of finding out about children's current interests and about what matters to them. Such information helps practitioners to provide a curriculum that is both relevant and meaningful.
Having an existing interest in a particular theme means that children approach it with enthusiasm and expertise, giving them confidence and increased motivation to engage in the activities provided. Children can use this expertise best in carefully planned, open-ended learning opportunities without prescribed, uniform outcomes.
Enhancing provision
Any significant interest that a child or children may have should be explored by enhancing a setting's continuous provision - that is, by adding theme-based resources to the areas of provision that are available daily to children. These should comprise:
- role play
- small-world play
- construction play
- sand and water
- malleable materials
- creative workshop area
- graphics area
- book area.
By taking this approach, children can choose to engage with the theme, or pursue their own interests and learning independently. Adults need to recognise that children require a suitable length of time to explore any interests in depth and to develop their own ideas.
ADULT ROLE
If children's interests are to be used to create the best possible learning opportunities, the adult role is crucial.
Adults need to be able to:
- enhance continuous provision to reflect the interests of children
- use enhancements to plan meaningful learning opportunities across all areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)
- know when to intervene in children's play - and when to stand back
- recognise that children need a suitable length of time to explore areas of provision to develop their own ideas
- model skills, language and behaviours
- recognise how observation, assessment and reflection on children's play can enhance adults' understanding of what young children know, and realise how these should inform their future planning.
Areas of learning
Personal, social and emotional development
Communication, language and literacy
Problem-solving, reasoning and numeracy
Knowledge and understanding of the world
Physical development
CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT
Resource box
Children need a wide variety of 2D and 3D shapes, large and small, to climb in and out of and to handle. Every area of the setting provides possibilities for children to experience and to play with shapes of all kinds.
To support children's experiences and exploration of shape, provide these resources:
- an extensive collection of 2D and 3D materials for exploring and building with. Include large objects, such as blocks, cardboard boxes, crates, and smaller ones, such as sets of small bricks, construction kits and shaped blocks
- tetrahedrons with triangular prisms; squares with cubes; circles with cylinders, so that children can generalise ideas and properties about 2D and 3D shapes
- equipment for climbing inside, and for sliding, rolling and stacking
- modelling materials such as damp sand, dough, clay and modelling clay
- shapes for posting into posting boxes, either bought or home-made
- enough teddies to put one in every corner
- pasta shapes: spirals, shells, ears, tubes, stars, for children to sort, and to find other shapes in the environment, such as spirals in shells and sunflower seeds
- play mats marked out with various shapes for children to fill
- chalk to draw shapes in the outdoor area and to play hopping round the lines or jumping inside the shapes
- plastic water bottles for squirting the water using big circular hand movements, or a bucket of water and a large brush for drawing shapes on the outdoor walls
- skipping ropes to create straight lines, zigzag lines and circles to walk along
BOOK BOX
My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes by Eva Sutton (Picture Puffin) Lots of cats from all around the world do exciting things like fly aeroplanes or play the violin, but this particular cat is happy hiding in boxes.
Postman Bear (Tales from Acorn Wood) by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler (Macmillan Children's Books) Deep in the heart of Acorn Wood, Bear is writing letters to his friends. Lift the flaps and see how to join Frog, Squirrel and Mole for Bear's special surprise.
Colin and the Wrong Shadow by Leigh Hodgkinson (Orchard Books) Colin, the cat, wakes up one day from a snooze to find that he has the wrong shadow! Vernon, the mouse, has taken Colin's shadow because it gives him confidence and makes him feel important.
Pass the Parcel by Ros Asquith (HarperCollins) Long ago and far away, in a draughty castle, Princess Patricia cried, 'I must play pass the parcel!' Join in all the party fun. There are presents to unwrap on the Princess's birthday.
The Jolly Postman by Janet Ahlberg and Allan Ahlberg (Puffin)
What's in the Parcel, Postman Pat?: A Lift-the Flap to Unwrap Book! (Egmont Books)
What Is My Job? (Postman Pat) by John Cunliffe (Egmont Books)
Why Does Light Cast Shadows? by Jacqui Bailey (Investigating Science series, Franklin Watts)
The Little Book of Hand Shadows by Phila H Webb and Jane Corby (Running Press)
Fun with Hand Shadows by Frank Jacobs and Henry Bursill (Dover Game & Puzzle Activity Books)
