How to teach shapes to a preschooler

Shapes look like the easiest thing on the list. Nine words, a few pictures, done by Tuesday.

They usually get taught backwards, though. Most of us start with the names, because the name is the part we can check. The part that actually matters comes earlier, and it is much quieter.

Looking comes before naming

Before a child can name a triangle, they have to see that it is not a square. That is a looking skill, and it grows through sorting, posting and building rather than through being asked what things are called.

You can watch it happen. A child who tips out a box of blocks and puts the round ones in a pile has already done the important half. Nobody taught them the word "circle", and not knowing it did not slow them down.

The Department for Education's early years guidance puts shape and space alongside number at this age, and most of what it suggests is exactly that: sorting, building, and fitting things inside other things.

Why it is worth more than it looks

Here is the part nobody mentions while handing you a shape puzzle.

Telling b from d is the same skill. Both are a circle and a stick, and the only difference is which side the stick is on. A child who has spent a year noticing that a semi-circle is not a circle is being handed a far easier job later on.

So shape sorting is not a warm-up before the real work. It is the same work, one step earlier. The letter side of it is in when should my child start learning letters.

An order that helps

Not alphabetical, and not all of them at once.

Then the rest as they turn up: diamond, hexagon, heart, semi-circle, rhombus. Those nine are what our own shape activities cover, and that is already more than most children meet before school. There is no prize for rushing.

Keep square and rectangle apart, for the same reason you keep b and d apart. Taught side by side, the difference becomes the lesson. Taught a few weeks apart, each one is just a shape.

Games that beat a worksheet

• Post it. A shoebox with holes cut in the lid. Nothing teaches "will this fit" faster than a shape that does not.
• Shape hunt on the way somewhere. Windows, wheels, road signs. One or two, not a checklist.
• Draw round things. A cup, a book, a coin. The tracing comes free.
• Build it, then knock it down. Both halves count.

Notice that none of those asks what shape is this?. The naming arrives on its own once the looking is solid, and asking too early turns a game into a test. Children opt out of tests.

Where an app fits, and where it does not

Sorting on a screen has one real advantage over a box of blocks: the pieces never go under the sofa, and it says the name the same clear way every time.

It has one disadvantage that matters more. A wooden triangle has weight and edges, and a child learns as much from feeling it not fit as from seeing it not fit. A screen cannot do that half at all.

So use both. And if there is only time for one today, choose the blocks.

Our shape activities work through those nine with slotting, matching and puzzles, and every one of them is read aloud.