I recently shared about my set of Color Themed File Folder Activities so they week I wanted to share about my Shape File Folder Activities.  The beginning of the year is a good time to prep some new materials you can use this upcoming school year.  As I mentioned before, File Folders can be great to use during direct teacher instruction, independent work stations, and set up for a paraprofessional to help complete with students.  I also think they come in handy to use during therapy sessions when I have a little extra time or need to try something different with my students.  If you are lucky maybe you can put the file folders together and laminate them at your school/workplace.  If you are like me and your schools don’t have the large laminating machines for staff to use, I found using the menu sized laminating sheets to work great for these file folders and then I can laminate them in my laminating machine.  You still need to trim just a little bit off the file folder so they fit in the menu laminator pouches but then you are able to laminate the whole file folder in one sheet without piecing 2 sheets together like I used to do!  This set of Shape Themed File Folders Activities includes 16 different tasks so lots of practice working on those shape concepts!

For the first 3 sets of file folder activities the student just matches the shapes together.  This includes matching the exact shape and color item together, matching shapes when provided the outline of the shape, and matching different shaped object together.  This is a good time to model those shape concepts while your student is working on matching.    

If you are working on receptive language skills hold up 2 or 3 shapes and tell your student which shape to select.  For example “find oval” and then if you student selects the correct shape they can match it to their board.  You can also hold up the different shapes and try and have your student verbally or with their AAC system name the different shapes.  Pentagon and Octagon might be a little trickier but maybe work on just naming circle, square, triangle, and star first. 

I made 3 different Level 2 matching activities which can be a little more challenging.  Now the student needs to find the matching shape and place it next to given shape or object instead of directly on it.  If looking at all the shapes is too much work on completing half the file folder first and then move to the other half.       

I love working on sorting tasks with my students.  I also made 2 different levels of sorting tasks.  The first 2 sorting sets the student is just sorting shapes.  Each file folder has the student sort four different shapes.  Again, if working on sorting by all four shapes is too hard just focus on sorting by 2 shapes at a time.  Have the student work on sorting square and circle and then work up to sorting by all four shapes. 

Keep modeling those shape concepts as the student works on sorting them.  Maybe your student can name the shapes as they place them on the board in the correct spot.

Level 2 sorting tasks now works on the student sorting different objects by their shape.  Again they can sort by 2 or 4 different shapes.  They need to look at the items and determine what shape it is.  For example, they can look at the pizza or the chocolate chip and determine it is a triangle and place it in the triangle area. 

There are different ways you can expand this activity when working with your students.  Tell your student what shaped item to find or have your student name some of the different items they see before sorting it in the correct shape location.  For example, “cereal box” and expand to “cereal box is a rectangle”. 

Then there are two different counting the shapes file folder activities.  The students can work on naming the shapes and counting how many of that shape is in the box.  If they are still learning about number concepts; have the student count how many shapes there are and then give them a choice of 2 numbers to select between to place on the board.  Maybe do one side first and then work on the other side. 

The final 4 activities work on the student completing different shape patterns.  I made 2 easy pattern activities which only include 2 shapes.  Completing patterns is still a hard task so even these easier pattern activities might be challenging for your student. 

There are 2 sets of harder complete the pattern tasks so the student has 3 shapes in each pattern.  I like when my students point to and say the name of each picture as they work on completing the pattern.    

If you are interested in this set you can find them on TPT with the link – Shape File Folder Activities