Art Lesson on Shapes for Preschool:  Teach Your Preschool Class Shapes
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This lesson plan is great to use in a unit on shapes, or it can be taught on its own. After teaching this art lesson on shapes for preschool, your students will be able to recognize and name common shapes, such as squares, rectangles, and triangles. You can also introduce shape properties in this lesson.

Materials

<em>Icky Bug Shapes</em> by Jerry Pallotta

Various die cut shapes

Construction paper

Glue or glue sticks

Fun foam shapes (optional)

Prior Knowledge

Show students a copy of each of the die cut shapes you cut out. See if they can recognize and name any of the shapes that you show them.

Teach

Show students the cover of Icky Bug Shapes. Have students make a prediction of what will happen in the story based on the cover of the book. Challenge students to find the shapes that you showed them throughout the book. Have students point them out as you ask.

When you have finished reading the book, talk about the bugs that were in the story and what happened in the story. Then, place the shapes that you have die cut where everyone can see them. Name the shapes and talk about the properties of each shape, such as the number of sides. Point out the differences in the shapes. For example, a square and a rectangle both have four sides, but a square has four equal sides and a rectangle does not.

Procedure

Before doing this activity, you will need to die cut various shapes for students to use to make their bugs. You can also use fun foam shapes if you do not want to die cut any. It is a good idea to make a bug out of the shapes you will provide to use as an example.

Explain that today students are going to create their own icky bugs using the shapes that you will provide. Show students the example of the bug that you made. Tell students that they need to use at least two different shapes to create their icky bugs. Pass out the construction paper and the glue along with the shapes. Have students create their bugs using the shapes by gluing them onto the construction paper. While they are doing this, circulate and help as necessary.

These icky bugs will make great hallway decorations or a wonderful bulletin board display. A great title for the bulletin board display would be, “Big Bug Shapes.”

Assess

As students finish their bugs, have them bring them to you. Have students name the shapes they used to create their bugs.

Another assessment option is to make extra copies of the die cut shapes. Each student will need one copy of each shape used, a piece of construction paper, and glue. Call out a shape and have students glue each shape to the construction paper as you call it out.

Extend

Teach about colors or numbers using the other books in the Icky Bug series.

Continue to learn about shapes. Here is another shape lesson plan you can use in your classroom right here at Bright Hub!