Whether preparing your child for school, supporting their formal education at home or finding resources for your classroom, there are seemingly endless resources for math learning.
At each stage of development, there are certain aspects math you should focus on. The U.S. Department of Education website offers the following activities that parents and teachers can use to help children learn to love math. (Find more at Ed.gov.)
Preschool
Before children start school, the focus should be on helping them understand what numbers are, what they represent and how they are used.
The following activity provided at Ed.gov uses math to help children understand that numbers can represent objects:
Five Little Speckled Frogs
Five little speckled frogs
(hold up five fingers)
Sitting on a speckled log
(sit on your heels)
Eating some most delicious bugs
(pretend to eat)
Yum! Yum!
One jumped into the pool
(jump)
Where it was nice and cool
(cross arms over chest and shiver)
Now there are four little speckled frogs.
(hold up four fingers)
Burr-ump!
(Continue until no frogs are left.)
After saying the rhyme, ask your child to hold up the correct number of fingers to show how many frogs are in the rhyme at the beginning. Then have the child hold up the correct number of fingers and count to five with you as you say each numeral.
Teach your child any counting rhymes and songs that were your personal favorites when you were a child, or have your child ask his or her grandparents what rhymes they knew when they were children. Other counting rhymes, songs and games that you may want to teach your child include “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe,” “This Old Man,” “Ten in a Bed (Roll Over)” and “One for the Money.”
Kindergarten to Grade 1
This fun game uses money to teach kids about the value of numbers.
Penny, Nickel, Dime
What you need:
Die
Pennies, nickels, dimes
What to do:
Have each player roll the die and say the number. Then give the player that number of pennies. Explain that each penny is worth one cent.
When a player gets five pennies, replace the pennies with a nickel. Explain that five pennies have the same value as one nickel — that is, five cents. When the player gets five more pennies, replace the pennies and the nickel with a dime. Help the child see that the value of five pennies plus the value of a nickel (five cents) equals 10 cents, which is the value of a dime.
The first player to reach a set amount — 25 or 50 cents, for example — wins.
Grades 3-5
Shapes teach us a lot about numbers. This activity teaches early geometry.
Simply Symmetrical
What you need:
Shapes such as a circle, a square and a rectangle, cut from heavy paper
Sheets of paper (rectangular)
Pencil, marker or crayon
Magazine pictures of symmetrical objects
Safety scissors
Glue
What to do:
As your child watches, show her the square that you’ve made. Fold it in half and show her that the two parts are exactly alike — or symmetrical. Do the same with the circle and the rectangle. Then give the shapes to your child and ask her to make the folds herself. Extend the activity by having her do the following:
Find as many ways as she can to fold half of the square onto the other half. (There are four ways: two diagonals and two lines “down the middle”).
Do the same for the rectangle. (There are only two ways: down the middle of the long side, then down the middle of the short side. In going from a square to a rectangle, the diagonals are lost as lines of symmetry.)
Do the same with the circle. (Circles can fold along any diameter. Use this discovery to introduce your child to the word “diameter”—the length of a straight line that passes through the center of a circle).
Ask her to find the center of a circle by folding it in half twice. (She’ll discover that any diameter-line of folding in half-passes through the center of the circle, an activity that will prepare her for understanding more complicated geometry later on.)
Show your child a rectangular piece of paper. Ask her, “What shape will you get if you fold this piece of paper in half?” Have her fold the paper, then ask, “Did you get a square or another rectangle?” Using scissors to cut the paper, show her that a rectangle will fold to a square only if it is twice as long as it is wide.