Kindergarten Prep Activity - Mystery Shapes Box

As you continue to prepare your little one to enter the big new world of Kindergarten, we want to give you some helpful tools that will help your child improve their skills! These fun and simple games and activities are a perfect way to practice important tasks such as sorting, guessing, problem solving, counting, observing and more!

Activity #1: Mystery Shapes Box

Skill: Learning shapes

Materials:

• An old box, such as a shoe box or package box
• Objects of varying sizes, shapes and textures. Legos, a small plate from your play set, a ruler, etc.

Set Up:

• Cut a round hole in the side of the box, large enough for the child’s hand to fit through.
• Inside the box, put the objects found around the home, such as items in your kitchen, laundry room, or child’s bedroom. Try to include items that represent basic shapes such as circle, square, triangle and rectangle.
• You can do this one object at a time for an easier task, or make it more challenging by including several items in the box at once.

Steps:

• Have your child put his/ her hand inside the box through the hole and try to guess what the object is.
• Take the item out to see what it actually is. Talk about the shape together. Is it triangle, circle, rectangle or square? Other shapes to include could be heart, diamond or oval.
• Another way to enhance learning is to cut out the shape of a triangle, square, rectangle, circle, heart and diamond, etc. to let the child match and compare the objects up with them.

Check for understanding: To promote language growth, ask your child questions such as “What do we use this item for?” or “where in the house do we keep this and why?”

Activities like this are fun and engaging to a child entering Kindergarten, but they also play a big role in preparing them for school. These interactions will strengthen their observation skills, increase their verbal communication, and help them practice using other skills they will need for learning in the classroom. Stay tuned for more and easy Kindergarten Prep activities from LaneKids!

This activity was adapted from staff and faculty at Fairfield Elementary School.