Example: “Leon, please sit down on the spot with the red triangle on it.” “Angela, the pencils marked with a yellow rectangle are for the girls today. So what can parents and teachers do to solve this problem? Make sure that you refer to the shapes often and make knowing them necessary and useful to the children. And research shows us that lower socio-economic parents tend to use academic vocabulary less frequently at home than their higher socio-economic parenting peers. When teachers move on to new skills and leave the study of the shapes behind, children may forget them if parents do not refer to them by name fairly often at home. People remember information and vocabulary that is USEFUL to them, and tend to forget information whatever is not. Sometimes, children will seem to have learned the names of the shapes, but then when retested a few months later in the year, many of them have forgotten them (especially the children from lower socio-economic families.) I think that this is probably due to lack of USE. There is a certain amount of simple memorization required in learning the names of the shapes, as well as in learning the numbers and letters. There are some shape copying pages on my blog post here that are free to download if you would like to try this. This can help them understand what the difference is in each one as well. Have the child try to describe these differences aloud, and practice sorting paper or plastic toy shapes into groups, saying the name of each shape as he goes.Ĭhildren also benefit from copying, drawing and building the shapes with sticks, Legos, blocks, or other types of building materials. (But make sure the child understands the words “same” and “different!” first!) If the child sees no difference, then you’ll need to simply practice helping the child identify the differences between the two shapes by asking, “How is this shape different from that one?” Help the child “notice” that the rectangle has two long sides and two short ones, and that an oval looks “squished” rather than perfectly round, etc. One way to find out if a child can see the difference between a square and a rectangle is to show them both shapes, and ask them if they are the same or different. Developmental Optometrists do vision therapy with children that have severe problems in this area that affect their academic achievement, but the average child will not need professional help he will simply develop the visual perception that he needs with time and practice. Basically, if a child’s eyes can’t “see” the difference between the shapes yet, then no amount of drill and practice will change this. Visual perception is what allows you to tell the difference between a square and a rectangle, an oval and a circle, or a letter C and a letter O. One of the most important skills necessary for shape, letter, and number identification is visual perception. Without each of these skills, children will probably make limited progress in mastering the shapes- OR, they will seem to learn them, and then shortly thereafter forget them. There are a few basic skills that must be in place before children are going to be able to master shape, letter, or number identification. Even after being told the names of the shapes many times, children often confuse one shape with another, or forget some of their names entirely! This leaves teachers and parents puzzled why in the world is this so hard when it seems like it should be so easy? Skills Children Need to Identify the Shapes Learning to identify the basic shapes can be a challenge for many young children.
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