Preschoolers are keen to learn more about the world around them, and learning through play offers many opportunities to support their fledgling growth and understanding about all sorts of things, including early numeracy. As parents, you can find many ways to make learning numbers a fun experience for everyone while still teaching the essence of numbers and what they mean to a young child. To do that, you can start with a few simple number recognition activities.
Why is Number Recognition Essential?
Teaching number recognition allows your child to identify and differentiate numbers and connect them to their actual quantities through visual identification and pattern recognition. Number recognition is the foundation that helps your child to eventually learn about other numerical concepts, including counting, addition, subtraction, and more. Number recognition can also include lessons on counting as an early stepping stone for your child, ensuring that they can easily understand how numbers from one to ten are related.
As part of their learning, number recognition activities aim to develop their numeracy through fun, engaging activities that teach them early numerical concepts and help develop their fine motor skills and cognitive functions through repeated learning sessions through play.
Telling Stories
Stories are always a fun way to impart number recognition lessons interactively and engagingly. You can have a bag of objects to help illustrate the numbers in the story. For example, you can tell a story about three friends named One, Two, and Three and the many encounters they have along the way: finding two eggs on their way to town, seeing four birds in the sky, and more. You should also encourage your child’s participation in the stories, as reading aloud has many perks that help them retain what they have learned while allowing them to add fun elements to the story.
Number Hunting
Think of this as a treasure hunt, but involving numbers instead. You can organise a simple indoor activity where children look around the house for numbers written or printed on cards or even use everyday items (like ping pong balls) grouped into specific numbers. You will then give your child a list of numbers they need to look for, then keep an eye on them as they search for these numbers. They can cross it out whenever they find one on the list. You can also take the opportunity to have them say the number out loud to reinforce their understanding.
Numbered Car Park
Does your child like playing with toy cars? You can use these to teach them number recognition by sticking small numbers onto their favourite toy cars. Then, set up a simple cardboard or manila card with parking lots that have numbers that correspond to the numbers on the cars. You will then ask your child to match the toy car to its corresponding car park based on the number provided. You can also consider replacing the numbers with dots or words representing that number to develop their number sense and recognition further.
Match Playing Cards
You can make a deck of numbered cards that correspond to cards with shapes and matching quantities as the numbered cards. With this, you can ask your child to match the numbered card with the corresponding card based on the quantity of shapes, so a card with the number 5 will be paired with a card with five circles on it. This activity is another simple way to have hands-on learning that reinforces your child’s number recognition.
Number Actions
Children can also learn number recognition through actions, especially when multisensory learning has benefits that help to reinforce lessons through engaging actions that children would love to replicate. You can do this easily by shaping the numbers one through ten with your fingers, hands, and even arms: you can form a zero by making a circle shape using your fingers, while you can have your child stretch their arm straight up into the air to form a one. While doing this, you can also have them shout the number aloud as they do the action.
Number Mazes
You can make a simple number maze at home or in the playground and then use a dice (you can find giant plush dice, too) to have your children navigate the maze. Your child can count aloud as they take the number of steps they must take based on the dice result, and you can also help guide them with questions or encouragement to help with their number recognition. You can also include a fork in the maze that can encourage them to think about which path they would like to take; you can even make one path shorter than the other to test your children’s number recognition.
Bubble Wrap Popping
If you have plenty of bubble wrap at home, consider setting some aside for your children’s fun lessons. You can take turns rolling a dice to see how many bubbles you can pop at a time, or you can even instruct your child to try and pop bubbles so that they can form the outline of a number.
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At Read With Me, we can empower your little ones with the literacy and numeracy skills they need to thrive. We hold various classes that teach kids the fundamentals by learning through play, offering a unique setting for helping your child build their skills through fun, interactive sessions with our tutors. Enrol with us today!
