I realize it's been awhile since my last post, but rest assured this mom has been busy beyond belief! While still struggling to get my infant on a schedule that will allow this stay-at-home blogger to make my naptime confessions, I find that it is my eldest who has recently been most in the forefront of my mind.
As the weather reluctantly shifts to Spring, my thoughts gravitate more and more toward school preparedness. When weighing all of the factors as to where to place my child in school next year, this decision-making process has educated me on all matters regarding "kindergarten preparedness".
Many of us can remember when the focus of school was still just on the three "R's", reading, writing & arithmetic. The goal of this blog is to share strategies that I have used over the past few years to teach my children the latter.
Many parents have their own set of tools in teaching literacy to their small children but then fall short when it comes to teaching them math skills. In a recent study discussed by Hechinger (2010) when assessed on math proficiency “fifteen-year-olds in the U.S. ranked 25th among peers from 34 countries”. (www.bloomberg.com). Given this, and other similar findings, parents in the United States should make efforts to stymie this trend by helping their children master numbers concepts in the development of early math skills.
Counting. Step By Step.
To teach my children how to count, I added a song to the end of their “ABC’s”. Because they are the hardest numbers for children to remember, I was sure to include the “teens” and had the song count up to twenty. I then taught these concepts in this order…
• Counting by tens
• Counting from ten down to zero
• Counting from twenty down to zero
• Counting up by fives (especially helpful in teaching children to tell time)
• Counting up by two’s
Just as in learning to write letters, children can learn to write numbers with tracing pages found in workbooks or downloaded from the internet. A very simple way to help kids grasp math concepts is to make them aware that math is all around them. At the same time it is important that children learn that numbers have value that can be counted. Counting is imperative but it can also be a fun skill to master. Parents can make a game of it by collecting their children’s favorite things and then having them count and then add and subtract these items including snacks, toys, books, cars, blocks, etc.
In an age where everything is digital, the concept of telling time by using hands on a clock can seem abstract. Timing traffic lights is a fun way to teach the concept of seconds and minutes. From here, parents can work on teaching children to “tell time” with use of clocks that they can manipulate in whatever form, be they toys, drawings, puzzles, etc.
From learning fractions of time, children can begin to learn fractions of other numbers by measuring fractions of amounts for recipes while helping in the kitchen. One favorite game in my house is called “the Pizza Game”. I constructed this game using colorful paper, crayons and scissors. The concept and construct of this game is very simple. I had the children help me color a number of round pizzas that I cut out beforehand. Once they were decorated, I cut the pizzas into different fractions. For instance, one pizza is cut into fourths, another into thirds, etc. These game pieces can then be played in ways only limited by the imagination. My children enjoy putting different pieces (or fractions) together to make one whole pizza (i.e. 1/2 + 2/4 = 1 whole).
I recommend visiting www.kidzpage.com to help teach youngsters other key concepts including tall-short, over-under, assigning values to different pieces of currency, comparing weights and shapes and other like lessons. I realize that all strategies shared in this post are not an exhaustive list of readiness requirements. Such a list could be provided by any local school district. What this blog has provided are simply a handful of concepts I wanted my children to master prior to entering school and the strategies I used to serve as a means to that end.
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