Shapes Walk

Yesterday we went to the library and I found a Paddington book. I read Paddington books as a child and it is nice to be able to share them with my children. I wasn’t a huge Paddington Bear fan but I have found new books at the library which are designed for younger children. One was about colours, another about numbers and the one I found yesterday was about shapes. I didn’t realise it was about shapes because the title was Paddington and the Disappearing Sandwich. If I had looked closer I would have seen, half covered by a sticker that it was about shapes.

Anyway later that day I pulled it out and read the story to my children. The story is about Paddington drawing up a list of his favourite shapes and going on a walk to discover them. We all enjoyed the story and finding the shapes in the story as Paddington did.

We try and have a walk every afternoon but Emily doesn’t enjoy them and whines a lot of the time wanting to be carried. TO distract her I found a scrap piece of paper, quickly drew 4 shapes on it and wrote their names next to each other and declared, like Paddington, we were going on a shape walk.

Well before we even left the garage we had found our first shape. Circles all around us – on the car, on our bikes! Then on the street we found our garage doors were squares

I couldn’t believe how much the children loved this. Emily was able to point to the shapes on the piece of paper and compare them as she wasn’t as confident as Alexander in naming them, especially rectangle and squares which she kept mixing up. I also found though I only did 4 shapes on the piece of paper Alexander wanted to extend himself, finding a diamond and also asking about other shapes that he wanted identified (a cylinder and one shape which I had to decide was a semi circle on top of a rectangle – it was a letterbox) As the walk progressed Emily would verbally identify some shapes but other times continued to use her sheet for comparison. She loved finding shapes on the ground and would jump up and down on them and want her photo taken, or get Jacqui (the dog) to join her in the pictures. Alexander enjoyed riding around the park which was a circle and both he and Emily counted the sides of a grass triangle (I ignored it was missing its 3rd point)

They also enjoyed finding shapes in the park, we found many more triangles than I thought we would. Emily loved it so much not once did she ask to be carried, or tell me she was tired, or her belly hurt but in some cases she ran ahead trying to find more shapes. Alexander loved it so much that he mentioned it in his prayers and told his daddy when he came home about it.

Alexander was pleased with this one, a square within a square for the front wheel and the back wheel is on a circle within a circle (A bit harder to see)

Anyway I think I will definitely try this walk again.