Shape Aliens in UFO's, and Other Fun Ways to Learn Shapes! (Freebies!)
In this post, I am going to tell you all about my newest activity called "Shape Aliens," (with a free download, too!) and give you some other ideas for helping kids practice shapes as well!
Learning shapes is one of the most basic, yet critical skills for children to learn in preschool and Kindergarten. So I've been working hard on coming up with some fun new ways to practice matching, recognizing, and drawing those shapes. Keep reading for some easy projects you can do with your child right from your home or classroom!
I saw a similar idea on Pinterest for using toy capsules as "UFO" on an addition worksheet on the blog called First Grade at Last. Check it out here! Using that as my inspiration, I created that Shape Alien in UFO's activity as a "make and take" for my "Reinforcing Learning: Letters, Numbers, and Shapes" session next week at I Teach K in Las Vegas! So I thought I would also share it here. Participants that come to the session will also get the little toy capsules that go with it, though! (Oh, boy!) Yes, I ordered a whole box FULL of toy capsules (those things that come out of gum ball machines with prizes in them) so that I could use them as part of my make and take. Just look at that picture below!
This is what 2500 toy capsules looks like! I got them from www.gumballs.com. And by the way, how do you like my shoes? And my floor tile? LOL!
Why did I do that, you ask? Well, I just wanted to do something nice and special for the participants in that session. I'm giving away sets of my Critical Thinking Question Cards For Young Children (but printed in black and white and at half size because there are another 200+ people in that session, too) at my "Making Critical Thinking 'Do-Able' for Kindergartners" session. You can read about these cards on this blog post here (scroll down to the bottom.) And they are for sale on my TPT store here. I got the pictures for the Shape Aliens from our workbook called Shape Creatures.
In "Shape Creatures," There are a lot of other cute little pages that you could do similar things with as well. To make my "Shape Aliens," I just reduced the size of the pictures down to an inch square so that they would fit into these little 1.1 inch toy capsules. I would have preferred to give the participants the larger capsules (the kind that you get out of a gum ball machine for 75 cents or a dollar), but they were just too expensive to purchase for the 200 people that are signed up for the session.
You can get the whole workbook full of our fun Shape Creatures from HeidiSongs here.
So! THIS is what you do with the Shape Aliens in UFO's activity:
1. Purchase some toy capsules either on gumballs.com, Amazon or at your local gumball machine, LOL! It will be cheaper to get them from a gum ball machine if you only need enough for one or two kids to share. If you want enough for a group of children to use all at once, then consider ordering them from a website. You might even have some luck asking parents to bring in a few!
2. Copy the small Shape Aliens on card stock paper and color them, just for fun. I colored mine the same colors as the lids on the toy capsules that they were to be in. I laminated mine, but that actually made it harder to fit them into the capsules, so you might not want to go that direction. But I always assume that somebody is going to sneeze on them or try to open up a capsule and touch them with moist little fingers, so I laminated mine!
3. Match the colored Shape Aliens up with the colored toy capsule caps and put them inside. You will probably find that most of your students Kindergarten and younger will NOT be able to open them at all! Once closed, these things can be very hard to open without crushing!
Note: In this picture, I did not match the color of the alien with the color of the lid on the toy capsule. I ended up changing them around so that it would not be confusing to the child which color they were supposed to use on the recording sheet.
If the Alien in the red UFO is red, color the spaceship red on the recording sheet. If it is blue, color it blue, etc. Fun!
4. Then give your students the recording sheet. Have them look at the lid color of the capsule, and color their UFO and Shape Alien on their recording sheet that same color. I think that this could be adapted to be done many different ways! In fact, I included the free recording sheet in several different formats for you.
Click here for today's free download! In it, you will find creatures with the nine different basic shapes for the toy capsules, and the recording sheet in four different formats, plus a variety of samples from our Shape Creatures Workbook, too! I made the UFO recording sheet in several different formats so that it could be used in a variety of ways, such as having the children write the color words inside the UFO's, draw the shapes themselves inside of them, or even write sight words that you might choose to put inside of those toy capsules!!! If you can think of other ideas for me to do with it, I will try to find the time to change it around for you. Meanwhile, have you seen our new Colors and Shapes DVD? It's so much fun- I LOVE the children's artwork that it has in each video! Check out this Hexagon song. It's a kid favorite!
Another activity that you could use these sheets for is practicing shapes uses "Wikki Stix". Have you ever heard of them? They are so much fun! Learn more about what they are here. In this activity, kids use Wikki Stix to trace these adorable creatures and make those shapes. WIkki Stix are a great way to incorporate sensory play and kinesthetic learning into the curriculum.
Here are some other ideas for learning fun: Make Wikki Stix shapes like in the picture you see above, and then have the children make the same shapes without using the Shape Creatures tracing paper as a guide. You could also place them in sheet protectors and have the children trace the shapes with dry or wet erase markers. You could even duplicate them for shape practice coloring sheets! And of course, don't forget that you can get the complete set of our Shape Creatures here.
Your kids will LOVE using Wikki Stix on these worksheets and practice pages… They will hardly even realize they are learning!
For more shape ideas like these, follow me on Pinterest!
Okay, now it's YOUR turn! What are some great shape activities that you love using with your little ones?
For number writing practice, check out these "Counting Creatures." Fun!
-Heidi
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Follow me! Did you enjoy this post? Do me a favor and share it with your friends! And follow this blog by signing up for my email updates here, or follow on Bloglovin', or follow me on TPT! I'm also on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and YouTube, too! Don't forget to sign up for our email newsletter for special deals and promo codes that you won't find out about anywhere else.
Learning shapes is one of the most basic, yet critical skills for children to learn in preschool and Kindergarten. So I've been working hard on coming up with some fun new ways to practice matching, recognizing, and drawing those shapes. Keep reading for some easy projects you can do with your child right from your home or classroom!
I saw a similar idea on Pinterest for using toy capsules as "UFO" on an addition worksheet on the blog called First Grade at Last. Check it out here! Using that as my inspiration, I created that Shape Alien in UFO's activity as a "make and take" for my "Reinforcing Learning: Letters, Numbers, and Shapes" session next week at I Teach K in Las Vegas! So I thought I would also share it here. Participants that come to the session will also get the little toy capsules that go with it, though! (Oh, boy!) Yes, I ordered a whole box FULL of toy capsules (those things that come out of gum ball machines with prizes in them) so that I could use them as part of my make and take. Just look at that picture below!
This is what 2500 toy capsules looks like! I got them from www.gumballs.com. And by the way, how do you like my shoes? And my floor tile? LOL!
Why did I do that, you ask? Well, I just wanted to do something nice and special for the participants in that session. I'm giving away sets of my Critical Thinking Question Cards For Young Children (but printed in black and white and at half size because there are another 200+ people in that session, too) at my "Making Critical Thinking 'Do-Able' for Kindergartners" session. You can read about these cards on this blog post here (scroll down to the bottom.) And they are for sale on my TPT store here. I got the pictures for the Shape Aliens from our workbook called Shape Creatures.
In "Shape Creatures," There are a lot of other cute little pages that you could do similar things with as well. To make my "Shape Aliens," I just reduced the size of the pictures down to an inch square so that they would fit into these little 1.1 inch toy capsules. I would have preferred to give the participants the larger capsules (the kind that you get out of a gum ball machine for 75 cents or a dollar), but they were just too expensive to purchase for the 200 people that are signed up for the session.
So! THIS is what you do with the Shape Aliens in UFO's activity:
1. Purchase some toy capsules either on gumballs.com, Amazon or at your local gumball machine, LOL! It will be cheaper to get them from a gum ball machine if you only need enough for one or two kids to share. If you want enough for a group of children to use all at once, then consider ordering them from a website. You might even have some luck asking parents to bring in a few!
2. Copy the small Shape Aliens on card stock paper and color them, just for fun. I colored mine the same colors as the lids on the toy capsules that they were to be in. I laminated mine, but that actually made it harder to fit them into the capsules, so you might not want to go that direction. But I always assume that somebody is going to sneeze on them or try to open up a capsule and touch them with moist little fingers, so I laminated mine!
3. Match the colored Shape Aliens up with the colored toy capsule caps and put them inside. You will probably find that most of your students Kindergarten and younger will NOT be able to open them at all! Once closed, these things can be very hard to open without crushing!
Note: In this picture, I did not match the color of the alien with the color of the lid on the toy capsule. I ended up changing them around so that it would not be confusing to the child which color they were supposed to use on the recording sheet.
If the Alien in the red UFO is red, color the spaceship red on the recording sheet. If it is blue, color it blue, etc. Fun!
4. Then give your students the recording sheet. Have them look at the lid color of the capsule, and color their UFO and Shape Alien on their recording sheet that same color. I think that this could be adapted to be done many different ways! In fact, I included the free recording sheet in several different formats for you.
Click here for today's free download! In it, you will find creatures with the nine different basic shapes for the toy capsules, and the recording sheet in four different formats, plus a variety of samples from our Shape Creatures Workbook, too! I made the UFO recording sheet in several different formats so that it could be used in a variety of ways, such as having the children write the color words inside the UFO's, draw the shapes themselves inside of them, or even write sight words that you might choose to put inside of those toy capsules!!! If you can think of other ideas for me to do with it, I will try to find the time to change it around for you. Meanwhile, have you seen our new Colors and Shapes DVD? It's so much fun- I LOVE the children's artwork that it has in each video! Check out this Hexagon song. It's a kid favorite!
Another activity that you could use these sheets for is practicing shapes uses "Wikki Stix". Have you ever heard of them? They are so much fun! Learn more about what they are here. In this activity, kids use Wikki Stix to trace these adorable creatures and make those shapes. WIkki Stix are a great way to incorporate sensory play and kinesthetic learning into the curriculum.
Your kids will LOVE using Wikki Stix on these worksheets and practice pages… They will hardly even realize they are learning!
Okay, now it's YOUR turn! What are some great shape activities that you love using with your little ones?
-Heidi
----------------------------------
Follow me! Did you enjoy this post? Do me a favor and share it with your friends! And follow this blog by signing up for my email updates here, or follow on Bloglovin', or follow me on TPT! I'm also on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and YouTube, too! Don't forget to sign up for our email newsletter for special deals and promo codes that you won't find out about anywhere else.
