The activities I’m presenting are suitable for 6-7 year-old students, they were thought for the Art subject, although some of the activities are also appropriate for Maths.
The Art contents involved are: drawing and recognizing shapes, shapes in Art, Tangram, space representation and abstract art using shapes.
The ESL contents are: shapes vocabulary, colours, objects that represent shapes (dice, wheel)…
The teacher, to start, will introduce the vocabulary for shapes with the help of some pictures and also with a song.
Once the kids get familiar with the name of the shapes, they will have to recognize shapes in ordinary objects they come across every day, in order to do that, there are many books about shapes you can use or, if you don’t have any, you can use pictures from the web.
The book I use is Agatha’s Shapes published by Gaviota.
Students can also practice shapes playing snap (I use the card game by Usborne but teachers can make their owns cards).
From now on, students will work on the Art aspect of Shapes. First, the teacher will introduce the Chinese game Tangram explaining the origins and the rules.
The teacher will give each of the students a Tangram worksheet, students will have to recognize the shapes, colour them and cut them.
Before designing their own tangrams, the teacher will give the students some models they will try to copy and say what they represent. After that they will design their own tangrams and they will have to show them to the rest of the students, the students will have to guess what they are representing.
The final task about Shapes will deal with creating an abstract picture using shapes and then using colour to improve its presence. Students will make a frame for their pictures.
Watch the slideshow for results:
Some ideas to work with shapes in higher levels:
- Abstract Art (Mondrian: line, shape, color): http://www.kinderart.com/arthistory/abstract.shtml
- Cubism (Picasso portraits): http://teachkidsart.blogspot.com/2009/06/wild-n-crazy-picasso-portraits.html
More resources on the following links:
Nice article about geometric shapes!!!
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