St. Nicholas and Shapes

St. Nicholas has come with a sack full of shapes. In Shadows on the Sack, children drag colourful shapes – a circle, square, rectangle, triangle, heart and star – onto grey shadows on the sack. They notice size too, because some shapes appear on the sack in two sizes. When the sack is full, St. Nicholas ties it up and waves. In St. Nicholas’s Beard, his beard is shaped like a circle, a square or a star, and the children tap the card with the same shape out of three. Then the beard turns curly, and each of the six shapes comes up once. In Colourful Boots, children sort shapes by colour into four boots on the windowsill. Each colour also has its own subtle pattern (dots, stripes…), which helps children who still find colours hard to tell apart. At the end, St. Nicholas appears outside the window.

The game uses no spoken words or music, only gentle sounds. At the start of each game a pointing hand shows what to do, and after a correct answer a bubble shows the name of the shape or colour. Nobody can lose and there is no time limit. Every time the game starts, the shapes, colours and layout change.