Building Math Skills, Naturally!

Having fun and free play activities that double as premath activities is a simple way to expose your toddler to learning math without her even knowing it.  I bet you already have age appropriate floor and wood puzzles, a deck of cards, toy cards, balls and blocks of different shapes and colors. These simple “toys” provide many opportunities to learn math in fun ways!  Many times I am asked what “educational” toys parents should buy.  If kids can use toys in different ways for various reasons, they can all have educational value!  We can use blocks, for example, to build towers to harness motor and coordination skills but we can also use them for sorting, counting, recognizing colors and shapes.  There are a lot of cognitive and language skills that can be taken from this same toy!

Putting puzzles together also works on many areas of cognitive development. Visually, your toddler has to look at the individual pieces to find those with matching colors and be able to match it to the color and picture of another piece. This is an opportunity to work on recognizing colors and learning new vocabulary!  Critical thinking skills are strengthened by contemplating how the pieces go together. Problem solving will be used to create a plan on how she is going to put the puzzle together.  Remember, your child will require and benefit from your engagement during these times of play to help her reason, communicate and problem solve.  You will see the power of play in action here!

My children have a lot of small toys such as cars, figurines, animals and more.  One way to build pre-math skills is to pile all of them and then sort out the toys by type.  Can you work together to put all the cars in one bin and the animals in another?  How about lining up a pattern of toys such as car, animal, car animal?  Can you count them after they are lined up? 

Math skills can be developed by incorporating many aspects of your little one’s playtime.  Take advantage of these opportunities, think outside the box and expose your toddler to life long skills in fun ways!