MATH LEARNING AT HOME Math is everywhere in our homes, so it comes as no surprise that we could, and probably should, talk with children about math in fun ways throughout the day. As parents, we can give children a head start by helping them get comfortable with math concepts like measuring and counting, all done in our own home. There are so many items in your household that you can use to encourage math learning. When interacting and supporting your child using items in your daily routine children will be more engaged and have a sense of excitement through investigating items such as containers, spoons, sticks, pots, socks, pegs, cooking using recipe. Counting is more than being able to rote a sequence of numbers from 1-100. Children are curious about the number and learn through the environment. At home you can support children to develop 1-1 counting skills, for example, setting the table, how many people do we have for dinner? If we have 5 how many knives or forks do we need? You can help children count by saying the names of each family member and then placing them on the spot where they will sit.
Have fun doing the following activities with your child Cooking Bake something where your child can help, have a cookbook or iPad ready to go and talk with your child about how much you need, for example, to learn 1-1 correspondence – a foundation to counting. When reading the recipe with your child, say we need two eggs, then count and say the attribute as you are doing the experience, one egg and one more egg means we have two eggs. Pointing to
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the picture of 2 eggs in the recipe can help to cement your child’s thinking. This is also relevant to other measurements such as cups, teaspoons etc. Using measuring cups means children are learning the concept of fractions, saying we need ½ cup flour, but this is a full cup, we need half, children can spoon the flour into the cup and then predict if it is half a cup. To check the answer (problem-solving skills) a child can use the ½ cup measuring and pour the flour into the ½ cup to check they have measured and predicted ½ a cup.
How long is your traffic jam? Children love using measuring tapes, rulers, and lining things up, you may like to challenge your child by asking them ‘how long is the traffic jam you have created with the cars?’ Let’s measure with our hands or feet, let’s measure with a tape measure – what number can you see? You may look in the home environment and use anything as a measure. By doing this your child is understanding the concept of measuring using various items in the environment.
How high can you build a tower? Stacking and building are natural elements of play for young children. Children can be encouraged to think about size, colour, shape, weight, and texture. Create patterns and structures, ask your child to guess how many blocks they could pile up without them falling? Count together, how many blue blocks do we have? This block is bigger than this one why, which is the bigger one? What shape is this block?
