Preschool educational games for
maths are so important, children learn more, and at a
greater speed, during their preschool years than at any
other time.
We need to show them the positive side of learning, that it
is not 'work', but 'fun' to learn.
Children love the magic and mystery of playing with numbers,
they will delight as they begin to grasp number, and its
fundamental meaning, but this is not something that will
happen over night, it will take time and patients.
Singing number songs is a great start to introducing your
child to numbers.
There are many number songs, and also many CDs and DVDs,
that can help you if like me you are not a natural born
singer. But it is the enthusiasm you put into the songs,
which will have your child asking for more!
Children need to do hands on activities such as Sorting and
Matching before they will understand that counting is
actually referring to sets of items. We can encourage our
children through a wide range of activities so that they can
understand and enjoy learning maths. Some great games can
include learning maths with shapes, ordering and sequencing
and games for counting and recognising numbers up to 10.
Preschoolers naturally want to sort things by colour, shape,
and size. When you are watching your child play, you will
see this tendency in action, as they try and make sense of
the world around them.
They naturally sort their cars by colour and their blocks by
size. Watch a child with a handful of crayons and they will
often separate the crayons into the different colours that
they see.
You can use this need to sort things to make learning early
math skills exciting for preschoolers.
Learning to distinguish between things is a major
accomplishment for your little preschooler. Whenever
possible, let your child help you sort things around the
house.
In the kitchen you could sort the fruits and vegetables by
colour or the spoons by size or when doing the laundry,
sorting the socks by size and color.
Putting things in order or sequencing is a basic maths skill
that some children will do naturally, they may put objects
in a certain sequence based on size or arrange items of
clothing in colour. Your child may arrange his cars in a
line from the smallest to the largest.
Ordering can be a fun game, as children begin to think about
the sequence of their day, and gain an understanding of the
calendar and seasonal timetable.
You can make your own activity cards that your child can put
in order, for example, pictures of your child getting out of
bed, cleaning his teeth, having breakfast, going to nursery,
having dinner, having a story read before going to bed and
your child asleep.
Doing simple picture activities like this is a fun way for
your child to look at his day, and also understand the order
of the day.
Another great picture ordering activity is one of growing
up. A picture of a baby, child, adult and an old lady. Talk
to your child, about where they are in the order. Children
love talking about themselves and this is a great way to
talk to your child, and help them learn about ordering.
There are some fantastic learning games for preschoolers to
help them learn about shapes, there are also plenty of free
activities that you can do at home.
Simple craft play will help your preschooler learn shapes
easily and naturally.
You could make small cards with colourful shapes on them, so
that when you talk about shapes you can point to them and
make comparisons with every day objects, such as round like
a plate or square like a window. This will make your child
see everyday objects in a new light and firmly place these
fun ideas in their memory.
Another idea for a learning games for preschoolers would be,
to make you own play dough, and ask your child if they can
find shaped items around the house to use as cutters,
perhaps using the shape cards, to help him remember what
shape is what.
Whatever games you're playing remember to keep talking to
your child about each shape, "has the shape got corners?",
"how many sides has it got?" so that he learns the important
words and phrases to do with shapes.
Don't forget to do 3 dimensional shapes to!
Books that focus on shapes and color are a great way for
your preschooler to learn.
A brilliant collection would be the Mr Men books, your child
will gradually begin to recognise the shapes the more you
read the books. Point to the shape and let your child trace
their finger over the outlines. The more you show your
child, the faster he will learn and understand the
differences in both 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional shapes.
Of course play is the greatest way to learn, other learning
games for preschoolers could be a simple Block Building
game. Try building different shapes with the blocks and ask
your child to find a block of the same shape.
Even tidying up gives you more opportunity to teach, instead
of just putting things away try asking your child to pick up
all the squares or all the triangles first. You can also do
this with cardboard boxes from around the house, kitchen
towel cylinder tubes, cereal boxes, or even make your own
box!!
There are also many Shape Sorter Toys available that will
teach your child all about shape and color, you can even get
Shape Dominoes and Shape Bingo learning games for
preschoolers.
Art is a brilliant way to teach your child about shapes,
these painting and sticking games are great fun and help to
reinforce your preschoolers creativity at the same time.
Have fun making houses, rockets or even a robot out of
squares, circles, triangles and rectangles. Put your
collages up on the wall and talk about the shapes you have
used.
All children develop their numeracy skills at different
speeds, so it is essential that each child is given the
opportunity to develop at his or hers own speed.
Before your child learns to count they need to understand
that one equals one item, two equals two items and so on.
This is a difficult skill for your preschooler to learn, so
have patients, and encouraging your child, will go along
way.
You can help your child by doing a small daily activity.
Laying the table is a good idea, as it gets done every day,
which is good practice for your child. You could do this in
a play situation, do a teddy bear picnic, and let your child
share out the sweets or cakes to each of their teddy bears.
Use very small numbers to start with and as your child gets
his understanding of association number and quantity, start
adding another one at a time.
As you count objects together touch each one. This helps
children to understand that they are counting one thing at a
time. A good way of doing this is at story time; 'The three
bears' is a good one to start, as it repeats up to three,
many times. Then gradually as your child successfully does
it by himself, give a more challenging book like 'The very
hungry caterpillar'.
It is important to build your child's confidence so that he
is not uncomfortable with numbers.
To help your child understand the order of number and number
symbols, you could make your own number cards, with the
number symbols on one side and the number of spots on the
reverse.
Lay out the cards with the spots on up to five at first, and
ask your child to put them in the correct order. When this
is achieved you could make the game a little harder by
taking one of the numbers out and see if your child can tell
you what number is missing.
Educational toys games for preschoolers will make them a
step ahead of the rest, with confidence in themselves and
dealing with numbers.
Education Games For Kids
Education Games For Kids, is packed full of the Best
Educational Games and Toys for kids of all ages. Whatever
your child's age or interests, you will find lots of
information to create curiosity and a desire to learn with
the Best Educational Games and Toys Around.
http://www.education-games-for-kids.com/index.html
A Healthy Breakfast
For Your Child
By
Carolyn Joana
Breakfast is usually the time
when you're busiest - what with packing your kids off to
school, looking after the house and rushing to work too.
Often moms give a ready-to-serve breakfast with sweet
cereals and cereal bars which do not have much of a
nutrition profile to boast of.
Read more...
Everything
Mom needs to know...
