Directions for making your own shape puzzles for children to work with.

Objectives:

• Learn to manipulate puzzle pieces to make them fit into the correct spot.
• Learn the shape and design of several shapes.
• Classify and sort shapes.

Materials:

• Heavy poster board paper
• exacto knife
• permanent marker
• ruler
• 5 different sizes of several shapes such as rectangle, circle, square, triangle and diamonds or hearts.
• Clear contact paper
• 1 gallon ziplock baggies.

Plan:

1. Take the poster board and the different sizes of one shape and place them on a piece of poster board. Trace all the sizes of that shape onto the poster board. Put them in different directions and different areas on the poster board in no particular order.
2. Once they have been traced use an exacto knife to cut out the inside of the shapes. Leave the line that you traced so the children have that to help them.
3. After you have all the pieces cut out use clear contact paper to contact paper the puzzle board and the puzzle shapes that will fit into them.
4. Repeat this process for as many different shape puzzles you desire.
5. After the pieces have contact paper on them, I prefer to put them in large ziplock bags and lay the correct shape puzzle pieces beside the correct puzzle.