This activity is inspired by Chalk Academy’s Contact Paper Christmas Tree with shape ornaments activity. As you can tell I’m trying really hard to teach my daughter there is a difference between a snowman and an owl. She has a nighttime owl that helps her sleep and I guess she’s never seen a snowman or made one before so she thinks they look/are the same. My daughter is 16 months old and I’m teaching/talking to her in Chinese with the help of my parents as well. I’ve been talking to her in Chinese since she was born so she does know 30+ Chinese words. She is slowly picking up just as many English words since my husband is Caucasian and the world around her (except for me and my parents) speaks English. So this is another activity to learn shapes with sticky snowman. Even if the words visible in the activity are not all Chinese, I interact with her all in Chinese.
Learn Shapes with Sticky Snowman
Chinese Vocab:
- Snowman (雪人, shuet yun)
- Circle (圓 形, yuen)
- Square (方形, fong ying)
- Triangle (三角形, sam gwok ying)
Things you need:
I didn’t find any clear Contact sheets to use like in the Chalk Academy activity but found some shelving liners that would do well with this activity. I cut out the shape of the snowman.
Taped it, sticky side facing you, to the arm of my couch. Painters tape was used to tape it to the couch for easy removal.
Then cut out shapes from a foam sheet – circle, square, and a triangle.
I used a black sharpie to draw these shapes onto the sticky snowman. I was going to write the Chinese words of circle, square and triangle to the foam shapes but I think I would detract interest from the matching the shapes of the foam sheets to the sticky sheet on the couch, so I didn’t add it.
Result:
She had fun! We sat for 10 minutes sticking the foam shapes to the snowman. At first she didn’t know how to do it so I showed and interacted with her to match the triangle with the triangle, square with square. She got them all wrong at first, then it was 7/10, then it was 10/10. I was shocked. I had to ask my husband if he was playing with it while we walked away but he didn’t. After playing for 10 minutes we had dinner and went back to the play area, removed the foam sheets and she continued playing with it. It was funny because I didn’t draw enough shapes on the sticky snowman so if she saw a square foam sheet on the square already, she would remove that one before placing another. It’s great because the foam sheets are easy to remove for playing again. Also I watched her as she held the foam shape in her hand and was trying to match the shape on the snowman before sticking it on. After she matched and placed the shape she would say “YAY”. It was great to watch and a great activity to help her learn shapes with this sticky snowman.
We further extended the play of this snowman by adding cotton balls to it. She had fun sticking the cotton balls to the sticky sheet.
The sticky snowman was accidentally ripped off the couch and unrepairable, so I created another but shaped like a Christmas tree like Chalk Academy. We had fun with this activity, and will be repeating in the future. Possible with different shapes.
Have fun!
Mommy Dragon
