SHAPE PUZZLES FOR ALL KIDS

Introducing the concept of shapes is not just about the child identifying shapes, and the number of sides. Shapes is one of the basic concept of mathematics and is important. To make it interesting I came with this idea “shape puzzles”,also this week in our homeschooling journey we have been working on shapes. This is one of the activities for the topic of the week.
These shape puzzles was easy to make and you just need one of the materials mentioned for this DIY shape puzzle. We have used glitter foam sheets, you can use normal foam sheets, coloured cardstock paper,felt or cardboard. Anything of your choice, just go with whatever is available at home. When you use cardboard or white cardstock paper, you might have to paint them in different colours.
What you need to do? Just draw some shapes on the foam sheets and then cut them out. Try using different colours for different shapes to start with and then to increase the level of difficulty you can use same colours.
Then the shapes were cut into pieces. You can choose to cut the shapes into 2,3,4 or more number of pieces based on what level of challenge you want to give your child. For toddlers, I would suggest you to start with a 2-piece puzzles, 3-piece, 4-piece and so on. Ours was maximum of four pieces.
One shape for each colour should do perfectly fine, we chose to go with every colour for all the shapes.
Like I said, the level of challenge can be set based on the child. Let me share some things that can be done.
Shape Puzzles – level of challenges :
Level 1
- Start with one shape
- You can choose to tell the child what to make, like for example “make a triangle using these pieces”
- Or Choose not to tell anything, let the child figure it out.
Level 2
- Use 2 or 3 shapes of different colours.
- You can prefer to tell the child what to make or just let the child do it

Level 3 & 4
I feel both these levels are equally challenging and it isn’t simple as it looks. Trust me, you can try it out yourself to understand what I mean.
- Level 3 : Use different shapes of same colour, which means all the pieces will be of same colour. The child has to make all the shapes using them.

- Level 4: Use all the shapes of all colours. Put them all in a basket or tray and let the child play.

Shape puzzles : free play
These pieces are just prefect for free play. The child can get creative and make different pictures.
