Toddler Rectangles

Here’s a fun way to introduce rectangles to your toddler’s ever-growing vocabulary – make a hands-on messy painting!

While brainstorming about reinforcement activities for our shapes of the month, I was surprised I couldn’t find any ideas on Pinterest, so I just came up with my own, and it was a big hit.

The secret is painter’s tape! I love painter's tape. This is a reminiscent of our square craft from October. We actually made this rectangle craft in January, when our color focus was black and white.

Therefore, I taped off rectangles on white paper and we fingerpainted over them with black paint. How much easier can you get?!

After the paint dried, I removed the tape, and voila! We had some lovely black and white rectangles!

I liked that they could see the rectangles as they were painting over the tape; although the teacher did the final step for the finished product, they could still tell what it would be as they were squishing paint all over it.

Of course, the kids were more excited about the spreading of paint than the shape they were painting over, but that’s why it’s just an introduction to shapes. And several of them did learn the word “rectangle.”

P.S. A word to the wise: do not work in toddler classrooms if you can’t handle messes!