Know your shapes

Five activities help kids become familiar with a number of common shapes and their names. All shape names that appear on screen can be spoken. Settings allow this to happen automatically or only when the child taps the shape's name - so a child can simply listen and learn the names of the shapes or they can say what they think a shape is before hearing its name.

The five activities are:

Watch and hear a shedling as it draws out a shape line by line. Can you guess what the shape is before it is complete? The sides of the shape play sounds that are related to their lengths and the shedling giggles at each corner, so you can play an eyes closed game and try to guess the shape by sound alone.

Play with differently shaped fishes and see their differently shaped bubbles. The bubbles grow and rotate as they float up through the water. Can you still say what the shapes are even when they are different sizes and at different angles? Have fun making and popping bubbles. An option allows bubbles to say their shapes as they are popped.

Pick the shape that is the same type as the shedling. Can you recognise the shapes even when they don't match the shedling exactly? What about when they are at an angle? Each set of shapes contains a range of sizes and proportions where possible - for example, there are differently proportioned rectangles and triangles.

Use the picture maker to play with shapes and explore their relationships with each other. What pictures, patterns and designs can you make? Snapping to position helps little hands line up the shapes.

Put the cut up pieces of a shape together to see what you get. Can you tell what the shape is before it is completed? Can you tell just by looking at the pieces?

All activities in this app need a long press on the button that returns the app to the menu screen. This is so that children who bump into the button accidentally don't shoot straight out of the activity, which could be particularly upsetting when using the picture maker. Please let me know at info@shedlings.co.uk whether this is useful or annoying!

Keywords: math, maths, shape, shapes, square, circle, triangle, rectangle, kid, kids, child, children, preschool, nursery, kindergarten, educational