Neighbourhood Shape Walk
Young learners will enjoy getting out and about hunting for shapes around neighbourhood.
It’s undeniable that very young learners often find it difficult to sit still. And that’s totally understandable. After all, when you’re young and relatively new to the world, there are so many new and interesting things around to see and discover.
For young children bursting with energy and enthusiasm, it’s great to seize any opportunity to take learning outside.
And that’s where today’s math activity comes in: a neighbourhood shape walk. This activity will have children out and about, on the move, spotting and identifying 2D shapes in their local neighbourhood.
What is a neighbourhood shape walk?
What’s our shape walk all about? Well, the name pretty much says it all.
It’s a walk outside around the local neighbourhood to look for shapes in the objects and structures around you, such as windows made of rectangles and wheels made of circles.
A shape walk works well with young children (preschoolers or kindergarteners) who are just beginning to learn about common 2D shapes such as circles, squares, rectangles, triangles and ovals. It’s a super way of learning on the go, and there are lots of opportunities for some interesting conversation around shape along the way.
Plus, the fact that this activity is outside and involves seeing math in real life makes it more memorable and meaningful.
You can take a clipboard with a recording sheet (more on that below) to keep track of the different shapes you see.
What shapes might you see?
We found a lot of shapes on our shape walk.
Rectangles were everywhere, in the windows, fences, pavers, panelling, sidewalks to name just a few.
We also came across many circles too, such as wheels, manhole covers, basketball net rings etc and lots of circles on fire hydrants.
Less common, we found, were squares and triangles. Apart from triangles we spotted in the roofs, they were generally a little more elusive.
And every now and again we’s spot a wildcard shape such as octagon:
When you’re out looking for shapes, have children keep their eyes peeled for shapes inside shapes.
For example, look here at the rectangles inside a rectangle on this window (not to mention all the rectangular bricks around it!):
Encourage children to look out for shapes presented at different angles. For example, we spotted this square as part of a decorative railing on a porch. The square looks a little different to how young children might normally picture a square. But it’s still a square, it’s just standing on one of its corners. There are even some triangles to spot in this picture too.
Recording neighbourhood shapes
When children are out on their neighbourhood shape walk, they may like to record which shapes they see.
To help with that, I have made a recording sheet that you can download and print out.
You can use the recording sheet in a couple of different ways. One way is to simply keep a tally of the number of different shapes you see. Alternatively children can draw some of the objects/shapes that they see on their travels.
If you have a phone or tablet with you, you could always snap a few pictures of some of the shapes you have spotted together, so that your child (or students) can look over them again another day.
Our recording shape has spaces for circles, squares, rectangles and triangles, but we used the back of the sheet to record any other shapes we saw, for example the octagonal stop sign.
Download your shape walk recording sheet
And for more real life shapes…
Looking for another activity that incorporates real life shapes? Why not check out our ‘Feed the Shape Monsters’ shape sorting activity. This colourful monster-themed shape activity is fun and hands-on. Children will love sorting and matching photos cards featuring everyday objects and feeding them to the monsters. Read more about ‘Feed the Shape Monsters’ here.
More shape posts and activities from Math, Kids and Chaos:
Or for other math activities and articles, head to one of our grade-level pages where you’ll find all the posts and resources relevant to that grade.
