This month your early intervention speech therapist will be reviewing Mathematical Thinking and Expression. Most parents and care givers assume teaching math to toddlers will be boring! We aim to help you provide your children with many opportunities to explore hands on, so they can begin to understand and communicate these abstract ideas during their daily routines and everyday interactions. Remember that children are naturally curious, and love learning through play.
Observe what your child is most interested in, and explore ways to incorporate math into that activity. Ask open-ended questions to help children better understand the math connection. For example, if your children enjoy singing, make sure you sing songs with numbers as repetition can help develop their math skills. If your daughter enjoys building blocks, ask her what can she can do to make the block tower taller? If your son likes playing with trains, ask him how many cars he used to make the train? What can he do to make it longer?
Sometimes it is just easier for us adults to clean up after toddlers have gone to bed. However, we don’t want to miss a natural opportunity to focus on sorting and counting. When it’s time to clean up and put away toys, books, or art supplies, encourage your child to classify things by putting all the blocks that are the same shape in the same box. This is also a good time to use spatial vocabulary, such as “next to,” “inside of,” or “on top of.”
Here are some other ways to help your child make math connections:
- Collect, classify, and sort things: Encourage your child to sort things such as rocks, marbles, pennies, shells and gummy bears. Taking your child for a walk provides many opportunities to categorize (leaves, rocks and acorns) compare (Which rock is bigger?), count (How many leaves did you collect?) as well as discuss the similarities and differences (Are the leaves all the same or are they different sizes and colors?). You can also estimate distance (Is the park close to our house or far away?). Count how many steps it takes your child to get to the playground.
- Find shapes around you: Look for shapes at home and outside (for example, street signs). Cut sandwiches into different shapes, such as a square or two triangles. Make your own shapes by cutting large shapes out of colored construction paper. Ask your child to “hop on the circle” or “jump on the red square.
- Measure and compare: Cut a few pieces of yarn or paper in different lengths and then put in order of longest and shortest. Cooking helps children count, measure, add and estimate. Ask your child to think about their own size relative to other objects (Do you fit under the table?). How many cookies are on the plate? If your child eats two, how many will be left? What happens when all the cookies have all been eaten?
- Play games and solve puzzles: Games teach math skills like counting, ordering, addition and subtraction. Meanwhile, a good puzzle will help your child build problem-solving skills, identity a variety of shapes and develop spatial reasoning.
- Set up a play store: As your child pretends to buy and sell groceries they learn about counting, adding, subtracting, problem solving and simple money concepts.
We hope that we have provided you with some ideas to help you with the development of your toddler’s Mathematical Thinking and Expression skills. If you have other suggestions, please let us know. Feel free to share your experiences with us so, together, we can help young children connect math with their everyday activities.