Ship Shapes

By Monica Painter

Create ships with different shapes with your preschooler. Based on the book, Ship Shapes, preschoolers are invited to explore the environment in search of different shapes in the world around us.

What You Will Need

Shapes cut out of construction paper (be sure to include a semi-circle, crescent, diamond, oval, star, rectangle, circle, and oval)

Pictures of boats, animals, houses

How To Make It

Take out a picture of a ship

Place the shapes on top of the ship, enhancing the picture

Add a flag to the ship, use different shapes on the flag

Continue to add shapes to different pictures, discussing which shapes make up different objects

Make it More Challenging

Introduce patterns, an early math skill, while setting shapes on top of pictures. For example, a ship flag could have a triangle, square, triangle, square, ask preschooler, "what comes next?" Make patterns more difficult as preschoolers catch on to the concept.