Free teacher web sites for Maths topic ‘2D shape’

What a cracker - children will love it. Click on the shape, then click on the name of the shape at the bottom of the screen. Includes all shapes children should know by the end of KS1. Usual favourites plus octagon, pentagon and hexagon.

External link: Catch the shape

• suitable for class use

There's a lot of e-pinboards around, but we like this because of its ease of use and the fact that you can bring rulers and protractors onto it too. Use a photo-capture tool with your whiteboard and you could turn this into a very slick lesson.

External link: Crick virtual pinboard

• suitable for class use

Great for properties of shape and lessons on symmetry. Includes rhombus, trapezoid and parallelogram as well as the shapes you would expect of year 2.

External link: Folding shapes

• suitable for class use

Explanations are good for teachers' notes and perhaps some upper KS2.

External link: How to make tessellations

• suitable for class use

Drag shapes to the board to make rectangles. A logic based open ended activity.

External link: Making rectangles

• suitable for class use

Read the descriptions and match the cards. Features an octagon. Drag the shape names from the right of the page to the description on the left.

External link: Match the cards

• suitable for class use

More suitable for KS2. Classic memory game. Do you know the difference between a parallelogram and a trapezoid?

External link: Names of more tricky 2D shapes

• suitable for class use

Includes basic information on the deltoid, trapezium, kite, rhombus, parallelogram, rectangle and square.

External link: Quadrilaterals information

• suitable for class use

Sort these shapes according to the right angles.

External link: Right angles shape sort

• suitable for class use

We love the ease of use that this site offers. Creative questioning is the key to getting the most out of it. Can be used to teach perimeter and area as well as symmetry.

External link: Shape grid

• suitable for class use

• suitable for teachers’ personal use

Sorting simple shapes by number of sides into a table.

External link: Simple number of sides shape sort

• suitable for class use

Polygon, lines of symmetry and triangle sort games can be found on this wonderful site. Simply great!

External link: Sorting games

• suitable for class use

Sort isosceles, equilateral and scalene triangles using a Venn diagram.

External link: Sorting triangles

• suitable for class use

• suitable for teachers’ personal use

Use the spot to spy through the circle at a mystery shape. Ideal for reception and foundation stage, includes square, triangle circle etc..

External link: Spy the simple shape

• suitable for class use

A simple tangram activity from Ambleweb. Super.

External link: Tangram game

• suitable for class use

As you'd expect - simple and easy to use tangram puzzle.

External link: Tangram puzzle

• suitable for class use

• suitable for teachers’ personal use

We love this simple tangram game. Why not use it as a plenary for a lesson on 2D shape properties. To have a go, each child has to describe the properties of the shape they wish to use.

External link: Tangrams

• suitable for class use

You know how tangrams work - a great way to encourage children to rearrange shapes in their heads. A good mental maths activity.

External link: Tangrams game

• suitable for class use

A tessellation activity for the teacher to create tesselations which can be discussed with the class.

External link: Tessellations

• suitable for teachers’ personal use

You can't go wrong with examples of tessellations. Lots of images and a few from the man himself, Escher.

External link: Tessellations

• suitable for class use

• suitable for teachers’ personal use

This takes a good minute or so to load, a simple activity to encourage children to investigate tessellations. Great.

External link: Tessellations for children

• suitable for class use

We love this pinboard. The easiest one we've used online. Ideal if you don't want the 3rd world war to break out, pinboards with missing pins and "who can flick the rubber band the furthest?" competitions (no longer compulsory you know). This web activity needs Java, available for download here.

External link: Virtual pin board

• suitable for class use

• suitable for teachers’ personal use

Use the properties to guess the shape. All the simple shapes and semi circle, hexagon and pentagon. Ideal for year 2 NNS expectations. Please make sure you have installed the Flash player on your computer first.

External link: What's my shape?

• suitable for class use