Colors and Shapes

Updated: Jan 13, 2023

Grab a Pre-K curriculum book or a book of arts and crafts ideas for preschoolers and you are bound to find a section that encourages teaching colors and shapes. If we were to take a blind survey and ask people what a child learns in preschool, I think even the most inexperienced-with-young-children person would guess, “colors and shapes.” And they’d be right. These two concepts seem to be universally taught to our youngest learners. In most countries around the world we find that children are taught their colors and shapes as a precursor to almost anything else.

Here are a few ways we chose to shine the light on these concepts at Teacher Stacey’s Playground

We always start with books and there are probably millions of books that cover the topics of colors and shapes for preschoolers. I will mention just a few we used.

One thing I appreciate about Mouse Paint is not only is it labeling colors but it teaches the concept of mixing the primary colors. We practiced using the color viewers.

When reading Mouse Shapes we built the images along with the mice. We had some adorable creations don’t you agree?

One lovely aspect of both Shape Shapes Shapes and City Shapes is that both books display how we can find shapes all around us in our daily lives. We had a shape scavenger hunt around the classroom. To do this I simply call out a shape ( or you can hold one up if you have earlier learners or are using a second language.) The children then have permission to go wild around the room to find that shape in their environment. This adds a movement component to story time which is always an engaging plus, and it’s a great way to help make that connection stick. One student ran to the kitchen area and came back beaming saying, “a pizza is a triangle!” He seemed very proud of his discovery. Instead of just teaching an abstract concept of a three-sided shape we are labeling the shape of pizza! Now, THAT is important! Below are our scavenger hunt results.

When discussing colors there are endless art activities that can be included. The easel was open all week! I especially liked having my shape stencils and my shape stampers because it is incorporating both the shape and the color.