Caroline
I had never heard of this book before but saw it pinned on Pinterest and instantly fell in love with it before even reading it. The pin came from a lovely blog called Little Page Turners. Since I have been reviewing shapes with my preschooler this past week “Mouse Shapes” by Ellen Stoll Walsh was a perfect book!
It is a cute story about 3 mice who are trying to get away from a cat. They run into a pile of shapes and make all sorts of different things out them, and finally discover they can make big mice with the shapes to scare away the cat.
After reading the book we started by getting out our blocks and making things out of shapes. My Dino obsessed son made himself some dinosaurs with his blocks. He has done this before in the past. Here is his Stegosaurus below.
Here is his really long Tyrannosaurus Rex. He made sure each hand only had two claws and that it had big sharp teeth.
After exploring with the shapes, we used the idea from Little Page Turners to recreate the mice in the story out of shapes.
My son had to find all the right colors of shapes that were used in the story to make the mice just right and then we glued all the pieces onto paper. They turned out pretty darn cute if you ask me. Haha!
After we were done with the mice, my preschooler wanted to make the cat in the story. I helped him cut the triangles for the teeth and nose, but he cut everything else out himself and glued it all together himself. I must say I am very frightened of the teeth on that cat!
I also found some fabulous free shape printables HERE. We used the Making Shapes Worksheet to trace the shapes and shape names.
We used the Match the Shapes Worksheet to draw a line between the shapes that are the same.
We also used the Following Directions Worksheet so my son could practice following directions. It was also great to practice concepts like big, small, largest, smallest, and all. I know this was a big thing my oldest did in Kindergarten last year so I want my preschooler to get some practice.
The last activity we did with shapes this week is play I Spy. We LOVE to play this game at our house. We decided to use our Family Room this time but we took turns saying “I spy a circle (or whatever shape)” and we had to find the correct object in the room. It can get difficult with tons of different shapes in the room so we usually add a little description like “I spy a red circle”, etc. I usually get sick of this activity before my kids do, just a warning! hahaha
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