Too fun! My niece and nephew, ages 3 1/2 and 22 months, have been visiting these last few days from Maryland. So, of course, I took the opportunity to weave in some math. One of the activities involved searching for shapes.

To do that, we needed to make binoculars. It was a super easy project that involved toilet paper rolls, yarn, a hole punch, glue, and lots and lots of bling. I had the toilet paper rolls already glued together with the yarn attached so all the kids needed to do was add the bling. I included feathers, as well, which is always a big hit. Just make sure they don’t glue the feathers so that they stick out and poke their eyes when they go to look through them!

Once the glue dried, we were ready to go on our shape search. I quickly reviewed some of the basic shapes and was pleasantly surprised that my niece was able to recognize a square, rectangle, circle, and triangle.

My nephew, who LOVES anything shaped like a ball, knew what a circle looked like. Here they are wandering the yard looking for shapes.

After a few minutes of looking for shapes, my niece seemed a little confused. “Where are all the shapes?” she asked.

After several back-and-forth questions, I finally realized that she was expecting to find and PICK UP shapes. So Nathan and I ran into the house, quickly collected a variety of shapes (lids for circles, tiles for squares, etc.) and placed them around the yard for her to collect. A treasure hunt!

By the way, I’ve done this activity a lot with kindergartners but we usually go on a pattern search. Maybe today I’ll give the pattern search a go with these two very sharp kiddos.