#shapesorter

Shape sorting toys are a staple in many households with young children. These seemingly simple toys, often made of colorful plastic or wood, provide a range of developmental benefits that extend far beyond keeping little hands busy. For 2-year-olds, a critical period for cognitive, motor, and emotional development, shape sorting toys can be particularly beneficial. Here, we delve into ten key benefits these toys offer.

1. Enhancing Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills involve the coordination of small muscles in the hands and fingers. Shape sorting toys require children to grasp, manipulate, and place shapes into corresponding slots, activities that strengthen these muscles and improve dexterity. This practice is foundational for later skills such as writing, buttoning clothes, and using utensils.

2. Promoting Hand-Eye Coordination

Successfully placing a shape into its corresponding hole requires precise hand-eye coordination. As children repeatedly try to fit shapes into their respective slots, they learn to synchronize what they see with the movements of their hands, a skill essential for many daily activities and sports.

3. Encouraging Problem-Solving Skills

Shape sorting toys are essentially puzzles. They challenge children to figure out how to match shapes with the correct openings. This process involves critical thinking, trial and error, and persistence, fostering a problem-solving mindset. Children learn to approach problems systematically and develop the patience to see tasks through to completion.

4. Teaching Shape and Color Recognition

Most shape sorting toys feature a variety of shapes and colors. Through play, children learn to identify and differentiate between circles, squares, triangles, and other shapes. Similarly, they become familiar with different colors, which enhances their vocabulary and cognitive skills related to categorization and sorting.

5. Building Spatial Awareness

Spatial awareness is the understanding of how objects relate to each other and oneself in space. Shape sorting activities help children grasp concepts of size, shape, and spatial relationships. They learn to judge distances and recognize how shapes fit together, which is crucial for activities ranging from navigating a physical space to assembling objects.

6. Boosting Cognitive Development

Engaging with shape sorting toys stimulates a child's brain, encouraging the development of memory, attention, and reasoning skills. The repetitive nature of the task helps solidify learning and builds a foundation for more complex cognitive tasks in the future.

7. Fostering Independence and Confidence

As children learn to manipulate shapes and successfully place them in the correct slots, they experience a sense of accomplishment. This success boosts their confidence and encourages independent play. They learn that they can solve problems and achieve goals on their own, which is essential for building self-esteem.

8. Encouraging Social Interaction and Communication

While shape sorting can be a solitary activity, it often involves social interaction, especially when parents or caregivers join in. This interaction provides opportunities for children to practice communication skills, learn new vocabulary, and engage in cooperative play. Describing shapes and actions, following instructions, and sharing experiences all enhance language and social skills.

9. Providing Sensory Stimulation

Shape sorting toys often come in a variety of textures, weights, and materials, offering rich sensory experiences. Handling different shapes and materials can help children develop their sense of touch and proprioception (awareness of body position and movement). This sensory input is crucial for overall sensory integration and development.

10. Supporting Emotional Development

The process of learning to use shape sorting toys can also support emotional development. Children may initially feel frustrated when they struggle to fit shapes into the correct slots, but through perseverance and eventual success, they learn to manage their emotions. This teaches resilience and coping strategies that are valuable throughout life.

Conclusion

"I am a European, a brown European. I was born here. I actually do not know what is supposed to be African about me. I feel honoured if someone sees cultural aspects in me that are African. But they cannot talk about my art as African Art. No way. [...] But their world would not be in order if they could not put me into a category." - Alero Boyo, as quoted by Yvette Mutumba in her article in Little Book of Big Visions, How to be an Artist and Revolutionize the World.

  All humans, regardless of geographic location, are taught from an early age about difference and categorization. This learning is not only about race and ethnicity but underpins the very basic orientation of space and the objects around us. We build on difference and categorization to form an understanding of our environments and, from this perspective, use binaries as supportive structures. The process of learning to differentiate objects and concepts, such as a square from a circle, a chair from a cup, the direction up versus down - is imparted as basic knowledge intended to build a sense of stability as we move through our lives. These basic tenets are what we can trust if all else shifts around us. Understanding how to conceptualize differences and categorizations is critical to functioning – at times, surviving – in environments built upon these concepts.

A shape sorter ball is a great example of a vehicle for communicating difference and categorization at an early age. It is toy typically given to Westernized children between the ages of 1 and 2 years. It is used to evaluate hand-eye coordination and problem-solving skills. The child’s ability to sort the shapes is evidence of a developmental milestone and is the first of many tests children encounter as they learn to communicate and build cognitive skills. It is through learning experiences such as this and many, many others that a person learns of difference and is rewarded – via validation of ability, coordination, and skill. While the shape sorter ball will fade into the bottom of a toy chest after a while, the child will carry on this “shape sorter” way of thinking.

Once one's identity - or the identities of a group of peoples - is categorized and shaped by dominant narratives, this identity is more easily consumable. Eventually, as we try to fit the multiplicity of human identities into the mental sorters we’ve had ingrained, the task of maintaining and supporting structures of difference and categorization becomes a challenge. As Boyo alludes via her quote above, how is it possible to be German and of color, to be of color and an artist, and finally, an artist of color and to not produce ‘African Art’? Specifically the style of "African Art" which fits dominant narratives reproduced over and over again. 

To delve into the poignant points that Boyo raises, we must understand how these categories were constructed and more importantly – why.

The focus of this blog series will be primarily on the “why”.