Hello! Welcome to my blog! 🙂 Today I’d like to talk about ways you can teach young children by just using simple colored paper shapes. There are several skills you can practice while having fun with just basic colored shapes like squares. Let’s get started! 🙂

First, cut out squares from colored construction paper or similar. I went with 2 inch squares and the colors red, blue, orange, yellow, green and purple. You will want 8-10 squares of each color.

Separate each color into 2 piles with 4-5 squares of each color. One pile of each color goes to the adult playing and one pile of each color goes to the child playing. The more players you have, the more squares you will need to make.

The games you choose to play will be decided by the age of the children playing. I will show you different games that you can make easier or harder to fit your child’s age. We’ll start with a very simple game. The adult places 1-2 colored squares in front of the child. In this picture we’re using 1 blue square and 1 yellow square.

Then have the child lay down their squares to match the adult’s squares.

You can start with 1-2 squares and gradually work your way up to more. Three…

And on up to 5…and 6…

Positive praise goes a long ways towards making this game fun. Comments like “You got it!” or “Great matching!” offer positive reinforcement and help build self-esteem. You can take turns with who lays down the first squares and who does the matching. 😉

Try laying the squares horizontal like we’ve already done and then switch it up by laying some vertical.

To bring more fun and a little more difficulty, you can also add in some other shapes like circles. Add new shapes according to your child’s age and what difficulty they are ready for.

Not only does the child need to match the shape but also match the color. For instance, a purple square, a yellow circle and a red square…even though they have 2 shapes with different colors, they need to find the ones that match.

As you’re ready to move onto harder matches, you can add numbers to the shapes. You can practice getting the numbers in the correct order.

You can also practice getting the numbers in the correct order AND the correct colors AND the correct shapes.

If you have some colored pom poms on hand, you can also use them for matching to the shapes.

The ideas are endless! I’m betting you will think of other ways to play with shapes, colors and numbers that will have the kids having fun and not even realizing they are also learning. 😉 Just make sure you have enough matching sets and you are good to go…and all you need is some colored paper shapes. 🙂 Have fun and happy learning!