March and April are exciting times of the year as preschool signups start and we begin prepping for our children to enter another learning environment. At this point, within ages three, four, or five, your child is becoming potty trained, knows their ABCs, can count to fifteen or twenty (or higher!), and is starting to show signs of academic readiness. While knowing their ABCs is a great starting point, they’ll become more in-depth with each letter’s name and the sounds they make to start preparation for reading and writing. The same goes for numbers and math, so let’s discuss how and when to teach your preschooler math.
How early is too early to teach your preschooler math?
As most questions revolving around children go, the answer isn’t simple. Everything we teach is to be used as a building block, even in older children and adults. We have to take certain classes in college to prepare us for the harder courses, right? It’s basic learning. So, the question “How early is too early?” really depends on what work you’ve already lain out. The question should be “Is my child ready for math?”, age aside. Let’s analyze the steps of math learning.
Firstly, children learn to count.
When we say they learn to count, what we mean is that they learn the sequence of numbers in order. Just like ABCs. A child doesn’t know what A, B, or C, is. All they know is that in the song, that is their order. When you teach a child to count, this is much the same. However, this is still good! We need to know the sequence of our numbers to be able to put together that a number is a collective amount of something. So our first step to learning math is, let’s say, counting to a certain number. For now, we’ll say ten.
Now that they can successfully count to ten, let’s start by adding objects to represent the numbers.
One—One block.
Two—Two shoes.
Three—Three balls, and so on.
Don’t worry about the actual numbers being associated with the amounts yet. First, you want them to understand the verbal word with the visual amount. We are creating a connection one step at a time.
Another good way to do this is with your fingers. Using fingers to count, both yours and theirs is a great way to learn math and motor skills! Having children hold up different amounts of fingers on different hands ignites several different parts of a child’s brain. If you think your child doesn’t need object representation as exampled above, use fingers. If they aren’t understanding the fingers, slow things down, and use the objects. Fingers all look the same, while different objects for different amounts will help categorize and separate number and amounts for a child. Different colored objects—even better! (Amazon or other educational websites have many tools specifically for early math learning!)
Alright, so the child knows how to count to ten and can use fingers to understand amounts. Perfect! Let’s add the math.
“If I have one finger here,” Wiggle a finger on your left hand. “And one finger here.” Wiggle finger on the right hand. “How many fingers do I have?” Give them a moment to respond, count, or just take in the new experience. Odds are, it is going to take a few times for them to understand what you’re asking them. If you have a third person with you, have them hold up their fingers so you can take your child’s hand and help them count the fingers. “One. Two”
At first, adding the math has nothing to do with them doing the math. It is about them learning the process of doing math. For them to put it all together, they need to understand you are asking them to count this finger and then this finger. A simple process, but a process completely new to them. So show them by someone else holding up the fingers and you slowly counting them, or someone holding up the fingers and you helping your child count them. This is how we build up to them doing it on their own.
Once they get the hang of it, add more fingers! When you do this, however, always try and keep the separate amount on separate hands. Why? Because we are creating a connection to written math problems. When a child sits down to a math problem in first grade, it will appear as “2+5= ”. So holding two on one hand and five on the other will help separate the numbers for them, and see them not just as a bunch of fingers they have to count, but as two amounts they have to put together.
As they get better with this concept, and know how to count higher, you can add more (obviously, we’ll need something other than fingers at this point). As you go, never create a sum higher than they can count. If they can only count to ten, only put something as high as two fives together. If they can only count to twenty, only as high as two tens. Stay within their range of understanding or else they may get frustrated.
As they get better at understanding amounts, counting, and what adding is, start to add flashcards to understand the visual representation of the amounts. The visual number “5” means an amount of “one, two, three four, five”.
Why do we do this after they understand simple addition?
Using an actual number instead of visual amounts is to make adding easier. This means it’s part of the building block system of math, but it is a block that is put on top of the idea of simply adding. They don’t need to know what a five looks like until they need to use a five for something. By learning the visual representation before understanding the actual amount it is representing, we are teaching them steps out of order.
As we know, it isn’t about age, it is about understanding and the building blocks you’ve taught your child in advance. If your child can do all these steps, they already know math! And all of these steps leading up to helping teach your preschooler math. It is never too early to give them the foundations. And, if your child is already to the point where they understand the visual representation of numbers and adding, move to flashcards and keep going!