Learning Shapes and Colors with Shape Bean Bags
This page may contain affiliate links. Learn More.
Learning shapes and colors is an important part of school readiness skills. See how easy and fun it can be with shape bean bags. It’s a great home daycare activity!
The best way for kids to learn is through play. Playing with bean bags is a favorite activity around here, so when I found these shape bean bags, I was excited. I also really love simple and easy activities for kids. I don’t have the time or brainpower to be cutting out 1000 pieces of a game or reinventing the wheel.
For more ways to teach shapes, check these out:
Learning shapes
I like to let my kids learn in natural ways. Throwing a bean bag shaped like a circle presents a natural learning opportunity. I like to find ways to use what we are already doing and add more learning to it.
These shape bean bags are a perfect vehicle for natural learning. I have some other colored bean bags for the daycare kids, and they absolutely LOVE playing with them. They came with some bowl-shaped toys called flip flop faces. Each one has a different emotion face on the top. You throw the bean bags into the bowl and when it flips over, you say what feeling is on the face.
My kids have learned colors this way because there is a bean bag that matches each bowl. It can be sorting and counting too. So when I saw these shape bean bags that come in the same bright colors, I had to get them.
Not only do they have the color we can learn, but they are also each a different shape. The word for that shape is printed on the shape bean bag so that gives us a chance to learn pre-reading skills as well.
There are so many things kids can learn from shape bean bags besides shapes and colors too. It takes eye-hand coordination to hit your target when you toss your bag. You have to develop balance to toss as well. And you are building motor skills as you throw.
The more learning the better. And this activity serves many purposes while still being just a fun game.
Shape bean bags
You can use the shape bean bags to practice balance, learn body parts, sing songs, play games, hit targets, throwing and catching, cooperation, taking turns, and many other things. Think about playing head, shoulders, knees, and toes by touching a shape to those body parts.
You can make a bean bag target by cutting holes in a box and painting it, using a corn hole board, lining up buckets to toss them into, or even setting up bowling pins to knock over with them. Use your imagination to find ways to make using them fun.
Kids can count how many they get in the hole or shout out the color name as they throw. They can even try to hit a blue pin with a blue shape or get the blue shape in the blue bucket. You can also make shapes out of tape on the floor for targets. The possibilities for ways to use bean bags are limitless.
You could also lay the shape bean bags out and try to draw the shape on paper or mold it in playdough to further reinforce the shapes.
I bought two sets so we would have more bean bags to use at once. They have the basic shapes of circle, square, oval, rectangle, triangle, star, hexagon, and a pentagon. To start with, I took out the hexagon, oval, and pentagon and we are starting with the more basic shapes. Then we can add to it as we progress.
Get some shape bean bags for your kids and come up with your own creative ideas for them to be learning shapes and colors while they play. Just keep it simple so you don’t wear yourself out.
Check out these 5 minute games for daycare to add to your lesson plans! And if you’re looking for low maintenance ideas, check these mess free activities out.
