Shape Sorter
Name the shape, then count its sides.
For grown-ups
- How long: 10 to 15 minutes is plenty. Short and frequent beats long and occasional — the early-numeracy trials with the largest effects ran eight weeks or less.
- When they get one wrong: the page shows the working. Read it together rather than moving straight on. Feedback that explains is worth several times more than feedback that only marks right or wrong, and that gap is wider in maths than in any other subject.
- Not timed: thinking time is the point of a book. Let silences run.
- Print it too: doing the same problems on paper a few days later is worth more than doing twice as many today.
What this practises
Naming flat shapes and counting their sides and corners.
Naming shapes and counting their attributes is where children learn that a shape is defined by its properties, not its orientation — a triangle stood on its point is still a triangle. Kiwi’s scale tessellation makes this the natural home for early geometry.
- The underlying idea
- A shape is defined by its properties, not its orientation.
- Where this sits in Illustrative Mathematics
- Kindergarten Unit 3: Flat Shapes All Around Us · Kindergarten Unit 7: Solid Shapes All Around Us
- Sources
- Illustrative Mathematics / Kendall Hunt (2024) all references →
Related measured skill: ALPACA · Early number. What this means