Shape
“Each object in its environment has its own shape. Much of the play and activity of the infant during the sensorimotor stages centers on learning about shape. Children also enjoy experimenting with creating shapes”
(Charlesworth & Kind 2007, p. 155)
In this workshop, I experienced many ways of making shapes using a geoboard, clay, multilink cubes, geoshapes, and polydron. These activities brought back memories during my preschool where I used to construct things with clay. My siblings and I enjoyed creating many things surrounded us such as balls, a box, an ice-cream and much more. After that, my father bought us ‘Lego’ and then we began to construct: houses, cars, robots and other things. Indeed, it was a normal thing as children grew out of their exploration of three-dimensions (3D) shapes though plastic materials such as clay and slime (Charlesworth & Kind, 2007).
Interestingly, these activities help children focus on geometric characteristics (Copley, 2000). For instance, in using geoshapes, 
I needed to be able to recognize the ‘triangle’ and ‘rectangular’ shapes in making a ‘castle'. I also supposed to know how to manipulate it so that it became a ‘castle’ not anything else. However, when it came to document the language use in sharing my ‘castle’ with my friends, I became vulnerable! Automatically, I described it as having four straight sides and it had a pointy point on the top. But, why I couldn’t I describe it as : three rectangles, and four triangles? Importantly, this phenomenon is quite ‘normal’ as young kid tend to express their geometric understanding with everyday words; such as ‘skinny’, ‘pointy’ or ‘corner’ (Wall & Posamentier, 2007). Thus, as a future teacher I need to help my students gradually incorporate conventional terminology into their descriptions of shapes (NCTM, 2000).
Another meaningful experience for me was creating shapes using geoboards. 
It was my first time with this experience using this ‘weird’ board- it has nails and it uses rubber bands! In this workshop, I was required to make shapes by stretching the rubber bands between nails. It was very enjoyable, as I created a multitude of shapes! Then, I needed to explain to my friends about differences and sameness. Here I realized that verbalization is very important to check students’ understanding of the concepts. 
Not only that, Hanibbal (1999) mentioned that it actually helps children incorporate more scientific understanding into his or her knowledge base. This geoboard and rubber bands also are very helpful tools in showing many different shapes, by just using one band. It also ‘gives exposure to ‘closed curves’ and also help develop visual imagery’ (Smith, 2007, p.59).
Besides that, ‘shape walk’ was another unforgettable moment for me. Personally, I felt that this playful spatial exploration was great and educational! One thing that I realized while observing my friends was ‘having’ a shape walk, 
young child can learn about position, direction, and distance relationships and about the use of the space. It was because she was walking through a hoop, followed the footsteps, crawled under a ‘bridge’, and had many problems to solve. Indeed, this activity gave young children some ideas about geometric shapes come from exploration; exploration with their bodies, hands, eyes, and minds (Clements, 1999).
Visualization is also one of the main areas in learning about geometry shape mentioned by Clements and Sarama (2000). 
In this workshop, I have experienced a “Six Times Over” task where I needed to fill in a trapezium shape with six ways. It was very challenging as finding appropriate pattern blocks to meet the ‘requirements’ was difficult. 
I agree that pattern blocks are an important material for children to use in exploring shape (Clements, 2001) and it also helps in developing students’ spatial ability (Diezmann, 1997). The difficulty to complete this activity was I needed to think other pattern blocks that can fit into the trapezium shape. Obviously, I can’t use circle and rectangular as I was required to use as many blocks as possible. The ratio of areas was a problem as I needed to ‘imagine’ carefully and sometimes just trial and error.
Indeed this activity helped me to create mental images of geometric shapes using spatial memory and spatial visualization. But, how could I help children to success in this activity? In my opinion, I might ask them to see in their ‘mind’s eye’ the shape that would result when a shape is flipped or when a rombus is cut diagonally from corner to corner. In short, I agreed with Wall and Posamentier (2007) that the teacher needs to provide opportunities to manipulate dynamic images so that they move beyond such simple visual thinking and become able to systematically connect their knowledge of shapes verbal math knowledge.
In short, through out this workshop, I agree with four features outlined by Clements (2004) where “young children can learn richer concepts about shape if their educational environment includes; varied examples and nonexamples, discussion about shapes and their characteristics, a wider variety of shape classes, and interesting tasks” (p. 38). Indeed, it has reformed my personal philosophy in providing my students with a conducive enjoyable educational environment to learn Maths, not just traditional chalk and talk style. I also need to be as creative as I can to reinforce students' shape identification by doing in classroom's activities or outdoor activities.
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