Veronika has started to recognize shapes. Although right now she calls almost all of them “stars”, what she’s exhibiting is an awareness that the world is made of shapes. She’s just starting to say triangle and circle, too! So I grabbed at the chance for some early learning today, by making a shape “sorter” with only one shape.

She has a toy bucket and lid that features a variety of shapes, but this can make it confusing for toddlers who are just learning the vocab. Instead, the sorter I made her only contained circles. I cut holes in the lid of a clean non-dairy yogurt container. Ideally you want your cut-outs to be a perfect circle, although this was tough to achieve with the knife I used.

I gave Veronika the can and lid, along with soft yellow golf balls to push through.

Since it was all circles, I could help her say “circle, circle, circle” over and over as she pushed each one through.

She used a round milk carton cap a few times, too, which roughly fit the circle theme.

The golf balls were just the right size though, such that she had to give each one a little push to make it pop in. She seemed to enjoy that sensation!

It seems like we’re all about inserting into containers and dumping these days, but whatever keeps her toddler hands busy is fine with me!