Symmetry cards: Shape creations with pipe cleaners

What you need

• Card
• Pipe cleaners, or alternatives such as ribbon, twine or lollipop sticks

Benefits

• Developing shape awareness.
• Encouraging the use of fine motor skills.
• Developing the use of positional language.
• Developing creativity and problem-solving skills.

The experience

Create half a shape on a piece of card using the pipe cleaners or alternative resources, create various shapes such as triangles, rectangles, etc. depending on your child’s understanding of shapes. Do this multiple times using various shapes.

Ask your child to create the other half of the shape by copying the layout you have left on the card. Throughout this activity, use positional language and support your children to create the rest of the shape. Mention the concept of symmetry and if it helps, fold the card in half to show the midline, and how they appear the same on each side.

You could also use a mirror to place at the midline and look at the reflection - when you remove the mirror does the other side of your picture look as it did in the reflection?