Key points:
- The ability to notice and identify colors and shapes is important for describing the world around us.
- Engaging in games and activities that encourage children to think in terms of colors and shapes can help develop these skills.
- Suggestions for activities include describing games, shape hunting, “I Spy,” and sorting games.
- These activities can improve reasoning and abstract thinking skills in preschool-aged children.
Noticing, recalling, and identifying different colors and shapes is a skill that underlies any activity in which we need to describe the world around us or take into account the physical context of where we are. That means that we use our ability to abstract characteristics like shapes and colors all the time. So, now you can see why it’s very important to stimulate your preschooler in learning to do so as well.
- Play describing games together. The more you engage your child in describing what you both see and introduce new but not overwhelming words, the easier it will be for them to think in similar terms later in their development.
- Go hunting for shapes. For a fun and activating game inside the house, you can ask your 3 or 4-year-old to identify and bring things shaped like a square, a circle, or a triangle.
- Try incorporating sessions of “I Spy” into your daily commute, household activities, book reading, etc. If your child is 2-3 years old, you can start focusing on very broad characteristics like “I spy something red”. As your child grows and develops language and cognitive skills, you can move into more complex shapes or colors, like “I spy a circle/something golden /a cone”.
- Play sorting games.
- Help your child notice how things are “similar” or “different”, as this will increase their reasoning skills and abstract thinking as well.
