Shapes of things we can see or touch are mostly too complex to describe, except very roughly: the shell is a bit round; the stairs are straight and they go up at an angle. Some objects have particular names to describe their shape. It is important to make available examples of different 2D and 3D shapes, such as equilateral triangles and tetrahedrons, squares and cubes, so that children can generalise their properties. It is also important to explore the relationship between 3D and 2D shapes and to look at how the shapes of some faces of an object determine the shape of the other faces.
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