Helping Your Preschooler Learn Math: Tips for You

When your child is in preschool, they will be learning many important life skills and academic skills that can help them as they move on to kindergarten and beyond. However, it is not just up to the preschool to teach your child. There are things that you can and should do to, for example, help your child with their math skill acquisition. There are many math skills that preschool children should learn including counting, pattern recognition, and even basic addition or subtraction. Get to know some of the ways you can support the lessons your child learns in preschool at home. Then, you can be sure you are doing what you can to help your child acquire basic math skills in preschool. 

Have Them Organize Their Toys

One of the steps you can take to help your child learn the pattern recognition side of mathematics is to have them organize and sort their toys when they are putting them away. Ask your child, for example, to gather all of the red cars first. Then have them get all of the cars of another color. You can have them line them up or simply put them away by color. This helps them to recognize patterns. 

You can also ask your child to count the toys as they put them away. For example, ask them to count the red cars, and then, have them count the next category as well. This will further help solidify their counting skills.  

Ask Them to Draw Specific Numbers of Items

If your child loves art and drawing, you can incorporate math into this activity as well. Ask your child, for example, to draw two dogs and four cats on one piece of paper. If you ask them to draw you pictures with specific numbers of items on them, you will be encouraging them to apply their math skills to the process. 

Once they have completed such a task, you can even ask them to tell you the total number of things they drew on the page. That way they can get a better grasp of the number of each category and the total number, which will help them with their addition skills. By making math a part of other types of creative activities, you will be teaching your child that math is fun and that it is applicable to all areas of life. 

Now that you know a few ways to help your preschooler learn math, you can work together with their preschool to ensure that your child has the best possible experience learning math skills going forward. 

To further help you child learn these skills, talk to a preschool like Small World Early Learning & Development Center.