Progress With Oxford: Shape and Size | Early Learning | Activity Books for Kids | Age 3-4

A starting point for teaching 3 year old shapes.

Perfect for pre school learning

Good little book delivered fast. Very helpful for homeschooling

My son has been at nursery full-time since September and is 4-years-old in July. He absolutely loves nursery and runs in there as soon as the doors open, zipping in and out of all the parents that are in the way. I got him this book which is for his age group and he absolutely loved it too, although I felt it could have been better.Inside are a number of activities to keep him busy, albeit he needs an adult to read the written instructions. Tasks include circling the correct shapes or objects that match the description, matching items that are the same shape, colouring, counting edges and corners and so on. Then there are the reward stickers and other stickers for tasks, plus a few left over at the end for the child to use as they wish.The things that disappointed me were the lack of the variety at the beginning. For example the first set of exercises asks the child to name the shapes and find and name shapes around you, then the second set of examples asks if you know all the names of the same shapes and to go on a shape hunt around the house. So basically they were asking the same thing. However this improved later in the book. The other disappointing thing for me was that the book asks you to do things outside the book. For example "Fill a closable sandwich bag with hair and glitter. Close it and flatten it. Draw shapes on the bag." That is something we can't do as we don't have those items and I am not getting them just to do that. And lastly some pages are really quick to do. Just circle some items and you are done so didn't take him long (although this was not the case with all the pages).But my son loved it as he does his school work.

As a parent and educator I occasionally wonder about the necessity of these books for all children, as in my experience they tend to be best suited to children who like visual- written based learning and like learning in a solo or one on one capacity, however this series has taken this on board with activities or prompts to help develop communication, explanation and spatial skills alongside recognition of shapes and comparison (size & placement) which takes maths out of books and into the real world such as 'tell me the story of goldilocks' to consolidate learning about 'big, bigger, biggest' and drawing shapes On a patio or pavement slab with chalk or watered paintbrush to consolidate shapes and build strong hands for writing.If you want to support your child's development, and I would say don't stick rigidly to the ages on the books, go with your child's development as the OUP seems to have forgotten that this is covered in reception too. This is a good choice for consolidation of skills alongside hands on play based learning.