Saturday, July 10, 2010

Very Simple Geometric Insets

My Montessori book (Teaching Montessori in the Home: The Pre-School Years) suggests using geometric insets to help with coordination and learning the names of shapes. We have some shapes puzzles, but I decided to make some insets anyway because they seemed pretty simple and I had some stuff lying around.

Though the book didn't say to enlarge the shapes, I think the author assumed I would. I did not. I just copied the page right onto card stock (because I had that and did not have different colored poster board). I cut out the shapes, traced them onto blue card stock and then cut the shapes out of the blue.

It was very easy to cut the yellow shapes, but much harder to cut the blue card stock to exactly match (even with the tracing). I especially had trouble with that rounded cross or x-shaped one. (What would you call that? And why is that shape one of the six? I could think of a lot of other shapes that would be more common.) I'm sure we'll use them a bit, but I think you might do just as well with puzzles without all the hassle.