Like it or hate it, learning math is a foundational education milestone in life. We use math to count, draw figures, or calculate our expenses and earnings in daily affairs. Whether you’re a homeschooling mom or just someone who wants to get a head start on improving your child’s calculating skills, this is probably the reason why you want to know how to develop math skills in toddlers.
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How to develop math skills in toddlers: My personal experience
I had to admit, I taught my child pretty early when it comes to academic-related concepts. However, this is not because I want to pressure him about learning, but I rather want to integrate these things in his play to develop his love for learning.
Thus, I tried to find information on supporting math skills in infants and toddlers. Thankfully, he received it really well and now enjoys both rote counting, one-to-one counting, and even reading math equations (just for fun, lol)! I wanted to share with you some things you can do to help develop a love of learning in mathematics for your child.
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How to develop math skills in toddlers: Tips that worked for me
Expose to number-related materials early on
The very first skill that your child will learn about math at a very young age is rote counting from 1-10. Rote counting is different from “one-to-one” counting because it is just plain memorization of the numbers from 1-10 . This neither means that they recognize the symbols of the numbers or they know how to count items from 1-10, it just means they know how to recite.
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So, what really helped my child integrate the recognizing of the number symbols, rote counting, and actual counting is exposing him to the number-related materials. This can include number puzzles, toys, books, and other things about numbers where they can learn to recognize the symbol. So when they are ready to count, the recognition of the number becomes automatic.
Just a side note, do not teach these things if your child is not learning a basic, functional language yet. Although it is tempting to teach academic things early in life, it is even more important to teach them to request, name their family members, and the things they see and experience every day. Only teach these when they already have an extensive vocabulary and you have the desire to stimulate them even more.
Use structured materials for solid learning
Many people are wondering, what math skills should a 4 year old have? At that point, a typical child should be able to count in one-to-one correspondence. This means that they know how many are the number of items when asked, at least up to 10-20. Achieving this skill is the prerequisite of doing basic addition or subtraction.
If your child hasn’t mastered this skill yet, don’t worry! You can use structured materials such as the Math Workbook for Kindergarteners and Pre-K. They contain creative worksheets to make learning about counting and basic addition fun for your child.
Using structured workbooks helps target a specific skill with fewer distractions. When combined with hands-on experiences, it will be a great tool to establish mastery of the skill. You can find the Math Workbook for Kindergarteners and Pre-K on Amazon. It is easier to know how to develop math skills in toddlers when you have the right materials.
Count in daily life
Another thing that would help is to assist your child in counting whenever the opportunity arises. Many parents ask what math should a 3 year old know, and doing this simple counting task with your child can help boost their math skills early on.
You can help them count their toys, flower petals, little items in the kitchen such as cereals or uncooked macaroni, or candies before putting in the cupcake. It is all about being creative and integrating counting and basic math into your child’s day. The love for anything starts early in life. When you stimulate and teach a child as early as they can, their interest will follow.
Math in interests
Does your child have a particular interest that you can integrate math in? Many of us dread math especially in college because we didn’t get to be exposed to it early in life. Thus, something that I am doing different is integrating my child’s interests with math.
My son is really into shapes. He loves shapes so much that he went on and learned even the “advanced shapes” which I only even discovered now as an adult (think enneagrams, duodecagons, and rectangular prisms lol)! Although this is not really functional for his age, I supported his interest and integrated this into learning more functional math such as counting the sides of shapes.
Also learn how to make your child read here.
For example, we would count the sides of the triangles, squares, or pentagons, and this would really make him interested and excited. If your child has a particular interest, find a way to integrate math into those things and see how their eyes will light up.
I hope you found this post on how to develop math skills in toddlers useful.
As always, don’t forget to check out the Math Workbook for Kindergarteners and PreK for an easy and convenient material in teaching early mathematics:
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