Sphere and Other 3D Shape Picture Cards

Get your students noticing shapes in the world around them with these posters/cards! With our 3D Shapes Photo Posters, your students can explore 9 different shapes in 3 unique and colorful ways. These 36 vivid posters, featuring real-life images, help your students make connections between the shapes and their own environment. These posters provide an amazing visual representation to aid your students in recognizing three-dimensional shapes all around them. They are perfect for helping young learners build their shape vocabulary. These posters are an especially great tool for practice before a “Shape Hunt.” Show students the many ways objects around them are simply 3D shapes to identify!

The 3D shapes in this poster set are: cone, cube, cylinder, sphere, pyramid, rectangular prism, triangular prism, torus, and hemisphere. Each of these nine 3D shapes are represented with a different photograph 3 times and once on a labeled Polaroid without an image. Use the blank Polaroid as you see fit! Maybe as a “running record” of times students have found that shape in their school environment? Or, you can add your own photograph of the 3D shape to personalize this resource! Especially useful in preschool and Kindergarten as students are being introduced to shapes and their names.

Pre-formatted in different sizes to make the printing process faster for you! To print as large posters, print only pages 23-58. To print as 1/2 sheet cards (2 polaroids per sheet of paper) print pages 5-22. To print extra small polaroid picture cards, print only pages 1-4.

K.G.A.2 Correctly name shapes regardless of their orientations or overall size.

K.G.A.3 Identify shapes as two-dimensional (lying in a plane, “flat”) or three-dimensional (“solid”).

K.G.B.4 Analyze and compare two- and three-dimensional shapes, in different sizes and orientations, using informal language to describe their similarities, differences, parts (e.g., number of sides and vertices/“corners”) and other attributes (e.g., having sides of equal length).

After looking at the real-world examples, try this shape-naming worksheet to revisit flat and solid shapes.

58 PDF pages of picture cards (plus blanks!) to use as picture cards or posters. The document is pre-formatted to make printing different sizes easier for you!