Shape Games for Kids

Find Shapes

• Children love looking for things. By doing so, they feel like detectives. The goal of this game is to walk around the house, park, mall, grocery store and school to find different shapes. Older children can create a graph by marking off each shape they find. Younger children can name each shape after they find it.

Matching Shapes Game

• This game is great for toddlers as well as children in elementary school. Each child gets a turn placing a small shape on top of the matching larger shape. You can also make the same shapes on different colors of paper, and have the children match by color instead of by shape. Older children can go beyond the circle and triangle. They can include shapes such as trapezoids, hexagons and diamonds.

Shapes Flashcards

• Flash cards are easy to make and fun for kids to play with. They are portable and can be great on long car trips or while sitting in a waiting room. You can make flash cards for just about anything. Why not for shapes? Older children can turn this game into a contest. See which child can name the shape first.

Musical Shapes

• With this game, kids learn about shapes and songs at the same time. This game is also great when the kids need to get up and stretch their legs. Create large shapes on the floor using masking tape. Make circles, triangles, squares, etc. The children stand outside of the shapes. Now you start singing to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it..." Instead the lyrics are going to be "If you're a circle and you know it jump now." The children will now jump into the circle and so on. As the shapes change, the children jump into different shapes. The children can they turn singing the tune and calling out a shape.

Memory Shapes Game

• Memory games are a preschool and kindergarten staple. These games give kids the opportunity to look for same and different. But more than that, memory games are just plain fun. For this memory game you will be making matching cards using shapes. Draw or paste colorful shapes on index cards. Shuffle them and place them face down. Each child takes a turn flipping over two cards. If they match, the child keeps the pair and goes again. If they don't match, the cards are placed face down again and the next person has a turn.