Making Maths Count for Pre-schoolers

From as early as the age of 2, many children will recite the words 'one', 'two', 'three', 'four' and 'five'. When their children do this, some parents proudly believe that their pre-schooler can ‘count to fifty’.

Unfortunately for families who think they have a young Einstein on their hands, this skill is rarely ‘counting’. For most children, it is well practiced ‘remembering’.

There is a big difference between this rote learnt skill and the understanding of ‘number correspondence’ where a child fully understands that a number refers to an item or a set of items.

Early development of number concepts is critical in developing a child’s later skills in mathematics. You can assist your child’s early numeracy skills development by motivating and engaging your child to play with concrete materials that he or she can manipulate.

Young children need to experience a lot of 'doing' and 'saying' before written numerals will make sense to them.

So, what are pre-numeracy concepts and how can you help your child to develop an understanding of early maths?

Engaging your child with a variety of measurement concepts is a great beginning and you can promote your child’s understanding of the mathematical skills of matching and sequencing by talking about measurement concepts that compare one thing to another at home.  

For instance, kids enjoy telling us that they are 'bigger' than their sister or brother, 'taller' than the lamp or that they are 'higher' than the table. Young children will also think that they have 'more' in their cup simply because their cup is taller.

The bathtub is a great place to start. Using a variety of plastic cylinders/cups and containers, you can  develop your child’s pre-numeracy skills through play by helping them to determine which has more or less, is heavier or lighter and so on.

Classification is another pre-number concept that children need lots of experimentation with. As adults, we classify on a regular basis when we look in indexes that are arranged alpabetically,  go to the supermarket to buy groceries from different food groups, sort laundry, and put our cutlery away in separate parts of the drawer. Your pre-schooler can benefit from a variety of classification activities which will also support an understanding of early numeracy concepts.

Classification Activities
• Use blocks to develop your child’s ability to repeat the patterns.... eg blue, green, orange, blue…

• Ask your child to sort pegs or the laundry based on colour.

• Use shapes to encourage your child to determine what comes next, circle, square, triangle circle…

• Ask your child to think of things that have similar qualities. For example, what can they write with and ride on? You might also ask questions about things that swim, fly, have wheels and so on.

• Ask your child how many items in the family room are square or round or heavy.

• Ask your child to tell you how many things are made of wood, plastic or metal.

• Extend classification activities to include more than one attribute (heavy and small, or square and smooth)

More Pre-Number Activities
• Draw a number of circles (faces) and put down a number of buttons for eyes. Ask your child if there are enough eyes for the faces and how they can find out. Repeat this activity for mouths, noses etc. Speak in terms of ‘more than’ and ‘less than’ or ‘as many as’ and ‘how can we find out?’

• Use stickers to make patterns on a page or classify them by attributes. Arrange a row of a set number of stickers, arrange a second row with more spaces between the stickers, ask your child if there are the same number of stickers or more or less. Ask how they can find out - DON'T COUNT! Match the stickers one to one.

• Arrange items on a tray (toothbrush, comb, spoon etc.) ask the child to look away, rearrange the items to see if they realise the number of items is still the same or if they think it's different.

You will give your child a great start to Mathematics if you perform the above activity suggestions before introducing numbers. They underpin the important mathematical concepts that children will eventually become involved in when they begin school and are essential part of kids’ early learning.

Sometimes it’s difficult to find store bought games that support classification, one to one matching, number conservation and other pre-numeracy skills, so you may need to rely on typical toys and household items for these kinds of games.

If you remember that early maths is more than just numbers, you’ll be helping your pre-schooler to later learning success.

What kinds of measurement, counting and comparing activities do your kids enjoy?

Share your tips for developing your pre-schoolers' early maths skills with others in the forum below