Teaching math is not as painful as you may think. There are many concepts that are needed in the early stages of life and including math games in your normal everyday activities will teach that math can be fun. Here’s a game with two different concepts involved. One is the counting aspect and the other is the idea of identifying which group has more or less.
Here’s one for the afternoon.
What you need:
Everyday items like
Chopsticks
Cups
Pencils
What to do:
Make groups with your items so that there are 3 groups of identical items but there cannot be the same number in each group:
4 pencils, 2 pencils and 5 pencils
2 chopsticks, 8 chopsticks and 1 chopstick
5 cups, 3 cups and 7 cups
Now ask your child to identify the group with the most and then the least items.
Give a reward of a hug, a high five or some other positive affirmation for each correct answer. Also allow for mistakes. A mistake is not bad but the normal process of learning. The best way to deal with mistakes is to ask the child to check their answer again. They will learn to check naturally after a time and you won’t have the headache of teaching that with schoolwork later on.
As the children get quicker at the game change it accordingly by making the number of items bigger so that they learn larger amounts and then mix up the items like 3 pencils and 2 cups , 2 pencils and 4 cups. Then ask which group has more pencils. It’s a small change but teaches them to be careful with their observations.
