Free printable shapes around us

Grades K–2The shapes hiding in ordinary things — clock faces, doors, pizza slices, stop signs, honeycomb. Print it for the wall, or match the objects below to their shapes.

Shapes Around Us math chart for kids Tap the chart to open it at full size

What shape is it?

Match each everyday object to the shape it is. The reason appears as soon as you choose.

Objects are how shape names actually stick. A child who has been told a hexagon has six sides may forget it by Friday; a child who knows honeycomb is hexagons will still know it years later.

The stop sign is the best example on the page. Almost every child in the US has seen thousands of them, and almost none has counted the sides. Once they have, octagon is theirs permanently.

Match each object to its shape

  • A clock face
  • A door
  • A slice of pizza
  • A stop sign
  • A honeycomb cell
  • A window pane
How you are doing
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Look at the outline, not what the object is made of or used for.

How to use this shapes around us chart at home

Go on a shape hunt. One room, five minutes, find a circle, a rectangle and a triangle. Naming shapes in the world is the real skill; naming them on a chart is practice for it.

Ask what shape rather than what is that. Pointing at a plate and asking what shape it is turns a familiar object into a math question, and children enjoy the reframing.

Then look for the rare ones deliberately. Hexagons in honeycomb and bathroom tiles, octagons on stop signs, pentagons on some footballs. The unusual names need unusual objects to stick to.

Objects make names stick

Shape names learned in the abstract fade. Shape names attached to objects a child already knows do not, because the object is doing the remembering.

Octopus and octagon share their eight. Honeycomb carries hexagon. A stop sign is the same shape everywhere in the country, seen thousands of times before anyone counts its sides.

This is why the everyday examples are worth more time than they usually get. They are not decoration around the real lesson — for a five-year-old, they are the lesson.

Looking at the outline, not the object

The shape of a thing is its outline, not what it is made of, what color it is or what it does. A paper plate and a clock face are the same shape.

Young children often sort by function or material instead — putting all the kitchen things together, or everything made of wood. Redirecting to just the outline is the move.

Turning objects also helps. A rectangle stood on its end is still a rectangle, and household objects get rotated constantly, which makes them good practice.

Where this usually goes wrong

Using flat names for solid objects. A ball is a sphere, not a circle; a box is a cuboid, not a rectangle.

Sorting by what the object does rather than its outline.

Not recognizing a shape once the object is turned.

Stopping at the first shape found. Most objects contain several.

After the chart goes up

A chart explains the idea but gives a child nothing to do. These do the rest.

Everything at this level: Kindergarten math · Grade 1 math · Grade 2 math

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Questions parents ask

What shape is a stop sign?

An octagon — eight sides. It is the clearest everyday octagon there is, and counting the sides on one is worth doing once, because the name sticks afterwards.

What shape is a honeycomb cell?

A hexagon, with six sides. Bees use hexagons because they fit together with no gaps and use the least wax for the space enclosed.

Why teach shapes with real objects?

Because names attached to things a child already knows are remembered, and names learned from a worksheet often are not. It also builds the habit of seeing shape in the world rather than only on paper.

What if an object has more than one shape?

Most do. A door is a rectangle with a circular handle; a window is a rectangle divided into smaller rectangles. Noticing several shapes in one object is a good sign rather than a complication.

Should a child call a ball a circle?

Not quite. A ball is a sphere, which is the solid version; a circle is flat. It is worth correcting gently, because the flat and solid names are easy to blur early on.

What grade is this shapes chart for?

Kindergarten through Grade 2. Matching objects to shapes is usually the very first shape work children do, before counting sides or sorting by properties.

Is this shapes around us chart free to print?

Yes. Open it full size and print as many copies as you need for home or a classroom, with no account and no watermark. Reselling it or re-hosting the file elsewhere is not allowed — link to this page instead.