Just as our preschoolers develop readiness to read, they also develop “math readiness” through play and games. It’s important for parents and teachers to recognize what they are doing, why they are doing it, and provide opportunities for them to learn and grow.
The obvious activity related to math is counting! Pre-schoolers love to count. They often do so loudly, over and over and over. Sometimes they skip a number.
Several things are going on here. One is sequencing, understanding that one item follows another in a fixed order. This is related to pattern recognition, and problem solving logic. The other wonderful thing they learn by counting items is that the number means a fixed quantity. One is always alone. Two is always one more than one.
Another important math skill children develop in play is the ability to sort and classify. Watch a child sorting blocks or puzzle pieces, lego-duplo parts, or putting small toys in the right bin. There’s a lot of thought going into this. “The round ones go here. The red ones go there. Oh, here’s another triangle. Good. I need this for the house roof.” They recognize shapes, colors, sizes, types, and group them according to how they need to separate different categories. Finding the match to a puzzle is also a math readiness skill, as is recognizing how things are alike and different.
I had a great opportunity to watch all of these problem solving skills come together one morning while watching my youngest child build with Brio Mec. At the time, he was a very quiet 3-year-old. He eagerly dumped out all the blocks, and then proceeded to sort them into types, setting unusual pieces aside. Every now and then, he’d refer to the picture on the box, and match what he was building to the picture. Finally, he was stumped. He stopped, looked, put a piece on, took it out, tried another, checked the picture, and tried again – nothing worked. When it was clear that none of the remaining pieces fit the design, he started shaking out the boxes and looking carefully around him. “Hmmm…..” he mused aloud. “Now WHERE did I put those destructions?” He was looking for the piece by piece picture instructions. He found them, disassembled what he had built, and started over. When he had solved his puzzle and made his building, he was so proud! That building sat in the center of the living room, walled off by other blocks. Even the cat did not dare touch it!
What a joy for a parent to watch a child think!