I thought I remember seeing an advertisement on TV saying that babies who drank their milk are intelligent and could recognize shapes below one year old. Perhaps it was because I didn’t bought X brand of milk for Yauyau consumption, that’s why she couldn’t differentiate the shapes and sort them accordingly into her shape sorter earlier on when I bought her this shape sorter around her 13 months.

She couldn’t do any sorting at all when I first presented her the shape sorter. She would shake it as a rattle or threw the pieces around, but not sorting. To me, it was like an impossible learning path for her. She didn’t know what to do with the little pieces of shapes. After demonstrating how to put a plastic piece into its relevant hole, I guided her hand to reach for another piece for her to try out. She was interested to imitate, but she couldn’t even get the orientation of the plastic shape correct. She became extremely frustrated after trying very hard to force the plastic shapes into the holes unsuccessfully.

It is indeed a long learning path. She was still mildly interested with it, so I spent about 10 minutes working on it with her before bedtime every night. Took us maybe a few weeks before she was able to understand (or memorise, whatever) that she needs to hold the shapes vertically instead of horizontally. Then it took another few weeks before she suddenly was able to get one piece in by herself. The cylindrical piece is perhaps the easiest as the circle has no angles, and she was so happy with it that she tried to put every other shape into the round shape hole. She tried forcing every pieces into the round hole for about two weeks before she managed to get in an octagon, then the pentagon, the star and now, almost all…if she is lucky and patient. She sees it as an achievement as she would immediately claps her hands, goes “yeahhh” and wait for us to clap our hands to prasie her after getting a piece in. Children always demand recognition.

The most difficult shape for her is a scalene triangle which has no line of symmetry. She couldn’t get this in most of the time without help. As a consolation, she would then dump in all her little plastic toy animals effortlessly as revenge.

I realised that all these while, I didn’t really teach her about the proper names of the shapes. I also wonder if she could recognise the shapes at all. Is she matching the plastic pieces to the holes according to their shapes or is she simply memorising their relevant position. Anyway, as long as she enjoys her sorting times, that doesn’t matter.