A child like a sponge absorbs new knowledge. That is why it is worth teaching them counting and multiplication from a very young age. But how to do it so that the toddler is eager to learn math?
Mathematics seems to be a complicated subject for many people. However, if from an early age a child learns it in an accessible way, it can result in great results in the future. The first major learning is undoubtedly the acquisition of counting and multiplication. Many parents don’t know how to pass this knowledge on to their kids. And you can do it in a really creative way!
Even a two-year-old can start learning to count. But it is important to do it in a playful way. You can count e.g. stairs when entering the house, trees during a walk, dolls or cars in the room or animals in the favorite book. It turns out that toddlers eagerly join such a game and they do not even know when they naturally start counting (usually to ten)
Fingers are indispensable in learning mathematics among children. It is on them that the child first learns to count. One by one they bend or flex them and counting comes almost by itself! You can draw a number on each finger for fun so that when counting, your toddler immediately knows what 1, 2 or 3 looks like. Great fun and learning at the same time!
For slightly older children who know what numbers look like, you can prepare special cards with words from 1 to 10 and colourful sticks. The child has to match the number of sticks to the drawn number. If the child does not know numbers yet, the card may contain, for example, dots
Colorful, wooden or plastic abacus. It seems to be a relic of the past, but in fact it is a great device for teaching counting and multiplication to the youngest. Children love to move the beads, at the same time it is easier for them to imagine different mathematical operations
When learning to count, you can also make numbers look like numbers. This is called the mnemonic technique. Each number is named, for example 1 is a rooster, 2 is a swan, 6 is a hen and 8 is a snowman. And so you can combine them into different stories, e.g. two snowmen are playing ball, which gives 2 × 8, and they are watched by a rooster and a hen (16). There are plenty of ideas, and making up these stories can be fantastic fun, not only for children, but also for adults
For children who can already read, it’s a good idea to write down the multiplication rules. If they learn them, it will be much easier for them to master math at this stage. What are the most important rules? For example: every number that you multiply by one gives that number, and multiplying by zero always gives zero. In the case of multiplying by zeros, you can use a funny rhyme, such as “For everyone it’s like a dream to multiply by zero numbers! You always have the result ready: zero – well, and the trouble is over!”.
Main photo: Susan Holt Simpson/unsplash.com
