Shapes are everywhere. Learning shapes not only helps children identify and organize visual information; it helps them learn skills in other curriculum areas including reading, math, and science. For example, an early step in understanding numbers and letters is to recognize their shape. Learning shapes also helps children understand other signs and symbols

Learning shapes is an important task of early childhood. Toddlers and preschoolers can learn to recognize a variety of basic shapes, and older kids will add to their shape knowledge through early elementary school.

Young kids would enjoy doing hands- on activities.

So today we did a DIY shapes puzzles. A very simple no-hassle project using materials that can easily be found around your house.

Materials needed:

-Shapes print-out (can be drawn or printed)

-cardboards or cardstocks (Something which is not flimsy and durable for those chubby hands to hold to later!)

-Glue, Scissors/Cutter.

Firstly you print out or draw the shapes that you wanted. These puzzles are meant for my 2 year old toddler so we are doing only basic shapes

Paste the shapes in the middle of the cardboard. Optional : you can outline the shapes with a marker just to make it more bold.

Cut the cardboard into two and it will be something like this :

Tadaa, your 2 pieces puzzles are ready !

2 pieces puzzles can be easily bought at your local stores but hey if your budget is tight and enjoy doing some DIY, why not try this idea?

You can make it more challenging for your older child  by cutting the puzzle into 4 and turn it into a 4 pieces puzzle. Or you can add more 3-D shapes.

Some tips:

1)Try making the shapes in different colours so your child can learn not only shapes but colours too.

2) I added some other pictures like sun, moon and stars so while doing the puzzle with your child, you can ask him “Who created the sun?” “Allah! Allah created the sun, Allah created everything “

3)If your child has begins to read, you can write out the name of the shape at the back of the puzzle. We are trying to teach our children both arabic and english so we wrote both of it.

4)Treasure hunt. After doing the puzzles,we can encourage our children to go around the house to find the similar shapes. Make it fun!

5)Bookish play. Books are an important aspect in the upbringing of a child. (I’ll write on that later inshaAllah). After a read-aloud session with any books on shapes or colours, you can bring out the puzzles and let your child match the puzzle with the ones shown in the book.

If you have any interesting ideas to share, feel free to comment below so more people can benefit from it inshaAllah.

Have fun with your kiddos~