Toddler Milestone: Recognize, Identify, and Embarrass Daddy

My daughter will be turning two in a few weeks.  She is very good at identifying animals and their poop.  She is getting much better with her colors.  She has even learned a dirty word or two (accidentally, of course).  One thing that she is now excelling at is discovering and naming shapes.  Does your two year old know what an octagon looks like?  Oh... he does... uh... then he's excelling too. Congratulations!  Anyway, how do I know that my daughter is doing great with her shapes?  Because she can identify them as soon as she sees them, even in the strangest places.
The Shapes Puzzle

You wouldn't think a little puzzle that was probably purchased for a dollar at Goodwill could be so useful.  However, this shapes puzzle from Melissa & Doug was the perfect tool for teaching our daughter shapes (and colors).  I like this puzzle because it has the familiar shapes like square, circle and triangle, but it also has some "advanced" shapes like diamond, pentagon, and octagon (my daughter's favorite one to say - "ock-a-gong").

Around the House

There are literally dozens of shapes around your house that you can use to teach your child.  All of our inside doors have squares and rectangles. Our windows do too.

If you are lucky enough to have a port hole window like we do, you can look at all sorts of shapes. Squares, rectangles, triangles and even an octagon.  We walk past this window at least a dozen times a day, and we use it to check the weather when we come downstairs each morning.

We have a mirror in our bathroom that is shaped like a circle.

There are squares hanging in our kitchen.

 





In Strange Places

Sometimes, she even spots a shape in an unexpected place, and she will just blurt out what shape she finds.  It could be the windows on a house we're driving by or a triangle shaped yield sign.  But other times, it hits just a little closer to home.  Last week I was holding her on my shoulders, and I wasn't wearing a hat.  She shouted, "Circle!" and I felt her finger on the top of my head.  "Yes, sweetie, that's a circle. Thanks for making daddy feel good."