24 January 2025
It is never too early to start mathematics lessons, especially when children slowly understand it through everyday interactions with parents, relatives, and their environment well before they enter preschool. Simple math activities like counting are fundamental to helping a young mind interpret and understand the world around them before they start to grasp the other fundamentals like adding, subtracting, and so forth.
Starting your children’s math development early does not need to involve basic calculations but requires a focus on slowly building up the fundamentals, such as counting, sharing, and so on. Whether through daily activities or playtime, helping your child develop early math skills will go a long way to support their overall development and learning process once they grow up.
It should come as no surprise that various studies have found connections between an early start in mathematics and school success, regardless of what other elements may be at play (including early IQ). Early math skills play a significant part in a child’s development since they are constantly in situations where they can learn about various concepts that will be essential to them later in life. More than that, early math skills are not limited to numbers; they also involve reasoning and deduction, pattern recognition, spatial relationships, and many other skills vital to a child’s gradual development.
Take the simple activity of playing with building blocks. The activity itself lends a lot to early math skills: children will see different blocks (counting) of varying colours, shapes and sizes (measurements). As they interact with these blocks, they will learn which blocks can balance on top of other blocks (reasoning) and how different block combinations can form new or familiar shapes (spatial awareness).
However, children cannot interpret these interactions in a meaningful way that makes sense to them on their own. Parental supervision and participation are vital components of developing early math skills in children; nurturing your children is essential to helping them learn while also building their self-esteem and confidence and even giving them a sense of security and warmth. As a result, it can have a robust and positive effect towards your child’s brain development, with far-reaching benefits that extend to their later years in school and beyond.
Even the simple act of talking to your child, even if they have not started speaking yet, can have tremendous implications in promoting language and literacy, which can benefit early math skills as they slowly understand what you are teaching them. For example, counting their favourite fruits can lead to simple addition and subtraction when they learn about sharing. That is a good starting point as they continue learning about math.
Again, simple efforts are always a good starting point to help your child develop early math skills, even if you have anxieties about your command of mathematics. Relax; the importance here is to start with the basics, like counting, and gradually work your way up to the best of your abilities. Here are a few tips to help get you and your child started.
Counting is the foundation of early math skills, and instilling the knowledge of counting can come from simple things like songs, picture books, and fun activities. You can even teach them about counting from the activities they engage in, such as counting the number of cats outside the window (or in your home if you have pets) or counting the number of steps to take to go up and down your house.
When you think about it, many children’s songs involve a good deal of repetition on top of providing an introduction to essential themes that help with their learning. Take “Baby Shark”, for instance: the song helps your child learn to count each of Baby Shark’s family members while giving them a fun, repeatable activity that helps to reinforce their learning and allow them to remember math concepts. Over time, they can rely on familiarity to help them solve various things independently.
Stories are also an engaging way to provide frequent (and sometimes repeated) lessons in early math skills. You can always choose to read aloud to your child, finding situations in the story that you can use to promote their participation and help them learn. For example, if you read about the three little pigs and the Big Bad Wolf, you can ask them, “How many pigs are there?” Picturebooks are also handy for showing your child pictures related to the story, affording a graphical approach to help them count, understand sizes and measurements, and so forth.
Playtime offers plenty of teachable moments to help with your child’s early math skill development. Making learning fun can significantly improve your child’s learning ability, making the entire learning process feel less like a chore and more like an enjoyable game to play. Plus, given how learning through play outcomes has had plenty of positives for children’s development, not just with early math skills, doing more fun learning activities together can be beneficial in the long term.
Going out to the zoo to count the animals or even having fun in the park to help them understand the concepts of sizes are just a few examples of what you can do to make learning much more exciting for your child.
Speaking of teachable moments, there will be times when your child stumbles in their learning. In times like these, reprimanding them may be detrimental to their learning process as it can make them anxious or scared about the subject, especially if you react in a way that diminishes their interest. Children make mistakes, so try to make it a valuable lesson your child can learn without being too harsh on them; it can help boost their motivation and get them back on the right track.
It is also worth celebrating small moments of victory when your child can learn something new and understand how to use that knowledge. From simple words of encouragement to the occasional sweet treat as a reward for getting something right, any kind of positive encouragement will go on to instil confidence in your child. Even if they might have gotten something wrong, make it a teachable moment to help drive them forward with renewed excitement to learn from their mistake.
As their math foundations take shape, you can gradually introduce opportunities to solve math problems slightly ahead of their current level. Doing so can help promote critical thinking in your child, especially in connecting the dots of what they have learned and putting it into practice. Combine this with positive reinforcement to help them stay calm and focused; be sure not to force it on them and give them enough time and space to come to a solution. As their confidence and understanding improve, they can slowly find the solution themselves.
No two parents will have the same experience teaching early math skills to their children. One parent may have no difficulty at all, and their child enjoys every learning experience with them; another parent’s child may not have any interest in the subject and actively avoid it or refuse to pay attention. Encouraging a positive attitude will take time for some children, even as it comes naturally to other children.
Making the math learning process enjoyable can improve learning outcomes, especially since children love to play. As long as children see their parents and caregivers having positive math attitudes while encouraging and supporting their learning, they will be just as motivated to learn. Gentle praise when they get the correct answer, helpful questions to let them see the problem differently, and embracing the mistakes they make as teachable moments are just some ways you can motivate your child’s early math skill development.
At Matrix Math, comprehensive and practical support for students starts from a team of qualified tutors and tried-and-true teaching methods. We provide your child with personalised tutoring sessions that help them to establish their foundations and build up from there with age-appropriate revision materials to help them understand the core fundamentals. With years of experience guiding students to solve complex math questions independently, we are ready to provide personalised assistance in your child’s math preparation.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can empower our students with these critical skills and more.
