2D Shape Riddles

Five riddle cards fill this 1st grade page, four in two columns and a wide one across the bottom, each with a question mark in its corner, a short riddle in a pale bubble and three name chips underneath. The child reads the riddle and circles the shape it describes. The riddles are written in the shape's own voice and never use its name: I am round all the way around and have no corners. All my 4 sides are the same length, and my corners are like a book corner. I have 3 sides and 3 corners. I have 6 sides and 6 corners. My 4 corners are like a book corner, and I have 2 long and 2 short sides. Each of the five shapes gets exactly one riddle, and the hexagon is the new name on this face.

Riddles move shape knowledge from seeing to describing. A child who can pick out a triangle may still not be able to say that it has three sides, and this page asks them to go the other way, from the attribute to the name, which is the first grade work of describing shapes by the features that define them. The book corner is the page's word for a right angle, chosen because every child has one within reach. The rectangle riddle offers square as one of its choices, so the book corners alone do not settle it: the child has to read that there are two long and two short sides. The square riddle keeps rectangle off its chips, since a square is a rectangle too and both names would be true.

One sheet, five riddles, five circles. The reading load is real, so read the riddles aloud with children who are still decoding; the shape thinking is the point, not the reading. For a stretch, cover the chips and ask for the name without a choice, or ask a child to write a sixth riddle for a shape of their own. The write-the-names face and this one share the core names, and doing both in a week gives the vocabulary two different routes in.