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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
Every kindergarten class studies community helpers fairly early on in the school year (often this ties in with Veteran’s Day activities). You’ll be smart to have it coincide with your local harvest season so you can build an entire farm thematic unit. Your students will be fascinated to learn more about where their food comes from (though you’ll need to be sensitive when you talk about meat production!) and you can even tie in a field trip to a local farm. Back at school, you can create learning centers around farm activities, and these farm shapes mats are a fun way for students to develop their 2D shape awareness.
Learning Features of 2D Shapes
It’s an unfortunate truth that geometry takes a low priority in the math standards for many kindergarten teachers, often being left till the end of the school year if it gets taught at all. However, there’s several good reasons for having students learn about 2D shapes earlier on. Firstly, learning to talk accurately about the features of 2D shapes (sides, corners, equal lengths etc) is an important step in describing objects accurately which is an important skill for science as well as math. Secondly, being able to identify shapes by their outline lends itself to sight word recognition where students will look at the length of words and how many “up” and “down” letters they see rather than the individual letters. Finally, it gives students who find numerical math tricky a chance to excel and build their confidence in a subject that relies on feeling good about yourself for success.
Preparing Farm Shapes Mats
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Extension Activities With Farm Shapes Mats
The premise behind these farm themed playdough mats is simple. Students pick a farm themed mat and say the name of the shape out loud. They then take their pot of playdough and roll it out into a snake, forming the shape as they do. You can engage them in discussions about how many edges and sides their shape has as they build it. To build their 2D shape awareness further, try some of these activities:
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Describe it to a partner – any time you can build talking and social skills into your kindergarten learning center, the better your engagement will be. Give one student one of the farm shapes mats and have them describe it using formal mathematical language to their partner.
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Find a match – another way to build social skills into your farm thematic unit is to use these farm themed playdough mats to find partners. Give everyone in class one of the playdough mats and have them create the shape. Then ask them to travel the classroom to find someone who has the same shape that they do.
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Group the shapes – you can encourage your students to think about the common features of the 2D shapes by having them create a full set of the farm shapes mats and then grouping the shapes together by common features. For example, they could classify them by the number of sides, or if it has straight edges or not.
Like this? Then you’ll love my 10 Farm Themed Literacy and Math Centers. These easy-prep games will get your students working on letters, phonics, numbers and more!
Games included:
1) Farm Shape Mats – Use pompoms, playdough balls, or other manipulatives to form various shapes.
2) Farm Number Puzzle Strips – includes puzzle for 1-10, 11-20, skip counting 2s and 5s
3) On The Farm Themed Ten Frame Mats
4) Chicken Spin and Rainbow Write – Can be used with a plastic spinner or paperclip and pencil combination. If a number has been written already, use a different crayon/dry erase marker to write over it again making a rainbow number!
5) Feed the Chicken Count and Draw Cards – Print these out and get kids to draw the correct number of feed or use with manipulatives like corn kernels
6) Eggs Alphabet Order Strips – Each strip has a set of 5 letters. Kids will determine if the letters are in the correct order then choose the thumbs up or down.
7) Cow Alphabet Matching – upper and lowercase letter cards that can be used on their own, in a sensory tub, or in an alphabet hunt around the room.
8) Lettuce Letters Pick and Cover – ‘harvest’ a lettuce card, find it on the playing mat, and cover. Repeat until all lettuce letters have been harvested.
9) Sybil the Sheep Syllable Clip Cards – Kids will determine if the object shown has 1,2 or 3 syllables and use fine motor skills to clip the correct answer with a wooden peg or clothespin.
10) Farm Playdough Letter Mats – 2 versions included for uppercase letters. You can also use other things to fill in the letter space instead of playdough of course.
Check it out for more ready-to-go fun!
Fun Books About Shapes:
Other Shape Printables You’ll Love:
1) 2D Shape Ice Cream Cones – In this preschool math center, they will do shape matching between the real-life 2d shapes on the scoops and the labeled cones. It’s the perfect summer math printable!
2) Truck Wheel Shape Matching – Your students will love this fun transportation theme math center that you can use any time of the year!
3) Farm Shape Mats – This printable activity will help your child learn shapes and develop fine motor skills. It can be used with playdough, pom poms, dot markers etc.
4) Dinosaur Shapes Roll and Graph –Preschool dinosaur-themed dice game to help with learning shapes and counting to 5.
5) Alligator Shape Bubble Hunt – Spin the wheel to find out which shape to color in!
Fine Motor Tools For Your Classroom:
Other Fine Motor Printables You’ll Love:
1) St Patricks Fine Motor Mats – Your students can practice their playdough, coloring or any other crafty skills.
2) Pre Primer Sight Words Q Tip Painting – Your students will learn the 40 Dolch pre primer sight words with this set of q tip painting printable worksheets.
3) Parking Cars Tracing Lines – Kids will improve their fine motor skills and concentration at the same time. There are more than 10 different tracing patterns to choose from.
4) Pirate Alphabet Playdough Mats -Literacy and fine motor skills are developed with these colorful playdough letter mats that your students will surely treasure.
5) Acorn Tracing Lines – Practice fine motor skills with these 4 different acorn-themed worksheets. Help the squirrel grab the acorn!
Browse My Most Popular Math Printables:
1) Parking Cars Tracing Lines – More than 10 different tracing line patterns to choose from, all of which help with pencil control.
2) Scarecrow Arrange By Size – 3 different scarecrow-themed image sets that they will arrange from smallest to biggest.
3) Bumblebee Addition Game – Solve the sum and help the bee land on the correct flower!
4) Farm Shapes Mats – Use playdough, pompoms, stickers etc to learn 2D shapes.
5) Popsicle Stick Number Formation – Kids will love forming the numbers 1 to 10 when ice cream and popsicles are involved!
6) Valentines Printable Worksheets Pack – 50 pages of mixed literacy and math activities.
7) Zoo Animals Number Puzzle Strips – Complete these cute puzzles and learn the numbers 1 to 20.
8) Counting Colorful Bugs – This printable book will help kids count to 10 while also learning about color words.
9) Humpty Dumpty Numbers – In this printable game, your students will practice number recognition using 1 dice or simple addition when using 2 dice.
10) Build A Number Santa – Match the number to the correct number word, tally mark and domino to form a Santa Claus
