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Peabody TeachFor teachers and grown-ups

Shapes wheel for early math

Twelve flat shapes to name, draw and find, for kindergarten and first grade geometry.

Tap, flick or press Space

12 entries

Hide a note behind a slice with a bar: cat | a small furry pet. It shows after the spin. Start a line with an emoji to draw it big. Two columns pasted from a spreadsheet work too.

After a spin

Anyone can come up again. Repeats are fine.

Who's away today?

Tap anyone who is away. Their slice is hatched and skipped today only; at midnight they are back. Nobody is deleted.

Drag the wheel round and let go to flick it. Your flick sets the show. The draw is already fair: your browser's secure random generator picks the winner before the wheel moves.

The contents travel inside the link after the # sign, which browsers never send to any server. Anyone you give the link to can read them.

Space spin, or stop sooner · R new round · M sound on or off · F full screen · Esc leave it

Your edits are saved in this browser only, and never sent anywhere. Turns and away marks never go into a link.

How to use it

  1. The wheel already holds 12 entries for “Shapes wheel”. Edit, add or delete lines in the box and it redraws; your changes stay in this browser.
  2. Tap the wheel, press Space, or drag it and let go to flick it. The winner is drawn first with your browser's secure random generator; the pegs, the clicks and the big reveal only show it.
  3. Choose Fade the winner or Remove the winner to use every entry once, or Keep everyone in for repeats. “Original list” brings back the starting entries, and Print makes a paper spinner of the list.

Ideas for class

  • Shape hunt: spin, then students find something in the room with that shape and describe where it is.
  • Count and compare: how many sides and corners does the shape have, and how is it different from the last one?
  • Draw it in the air, then on a whiteboard, then with pattern blocks or playdough.
  • Sort a bag of attribute blocks by the shape the wheel picks.
  • Build a picture where every spin adds one more shape to a house, a robot or a boat.

Related

Questions

Are star, heart and crescent real shapes?

They are common shapes children know, though they are not named polygons in a geometry book. For a stricter list, delete those three lines and the wheel keeps only polygons and the circle.

What about 3D shapes?

Replace the lines with Cube, Sphere, Cone, Cylinder, Pyramid and Prism for a solid shapes version. Your list is saved in this browser.

How can I check whether students know the attributes?

After each spin ask for the number of sides and corners, whether the sides are equal, and one thing in the room that shares the shape. Watch for confusion between rectangle and square, or between circle and oval.

Nothing you do here is sent to us. Names, lists and settings stay in this browser. No sign-in, no ads.