Early maths builds a solid foundation for later mathematics, which is considered a core subject in most curriculums. Furthermore, early maths helps build skills such as problem solving, and developing spatial awareness.
Tanja Mcllroy from Empowered Parents believes toddlers are curious and have a natural interest in the world around them. According to her, this makes teaching maths skills in their early stages simple to do in a hands-on way.
She then explains that maths skills are normally pre-number skills which are skills that contribute to mathematical understanding without actually involving numbers.
Here are Tanja’s seven suggestions on early maths skills with simple activities:
- Baskets
Provide some baskets and a selection of objects and encourage children to undertake sorting and grouping activities.
There are many early maths skills that can be developed through this simple exercise and you can tailor the selection of objects to your particular children’s needs.
- Cooking
Cooking activities are a favourite for most children and learning to cook is an important life skill. Alongside this, there is plenty of opportunity for mathematical thinking, activity and language.
- Laundry Sorting
As well as helping to get a household chore done, allowing small children to help with sorting laundry can also be beneficial to their early maths development. They can categorise clothing by type, colour, or who it belongs to.
- Building Blocks
Most children love building with blocks, and as well as enhancing creativity and enabling scientific understanding, building and stacking blocks has many benefits to mathematical development.
Children can analyse the properties of blocks to select appropriate blocks for different parts of the structure.
Building with blocks also gives ample opportunity for the development and use of positional language such as on top of, underneath, next to, in front of, behind, left, right and between.
- Making Patterns
Understanding and being able to identify, continue and create patterns lay the early foundations for later number work and mathematical thinking.
A great way to start developing this awareness is by using simple AB repeating patterns with colours. You might use cubes, blocks or beads, paint or coloured pens or dabbers on long pieces of paper.
As children progress through their understanding, they can move on to more complex patterns.
- Board Games
There are plenty of high-quality board games available for young children and many of these help to develop early numeracy skills.
Counting aloud and moving one space for each number helps children to develop one-to-one correspondence.
Games involving using dice help children to recognise quantities quickly, also called subitising, which is important for building mathematical competencies.
- Outdoor Mud Kitchen
Learning early maths skills is certainly not restricted to the indoor environment and as most children love playing outdoors it makes sense to take their learning outdoors too.
“For very young children, filling and emptying containers builds a rudimentary understanding of quantity, shape and space whilst older children can begin to use the language associated with this; full, empty, more, less. Adding weighing scales – either digital, analogue or balance scales – is a great way to maximise mathematical learning opportunities in a mud kitchen,” says Tanja.
Compiled by PHALIMO MOEKETSI Source: EMPOWERED PARENTS/TANJA MCLLROY
