Primary School Prep DIY Guide-Math-Page 1
INTRODUCTION
You have heard us say this before, but you must start teaching math early. Start teaching as early as possible from above five months old.
We will warn you now, that in our experience, in many cases, math will be harder to teach than reading. It will likely take longer for you to see results with math than with reading and it will be the subject that will most likely lead you to quit.
Just be prepared for this and when things get difficult you will be more likely to keep going than to quit.
QUANTITY RECOGNITION STAGE
​
Teach Quantities
The first step to teaching your child math topics is to teach them to recognise quantities. Don’t start by teaching them numerals like “1, 2, 3,” etc. Remember these numbers represent quantities. It is so important that your child understands math and if you start by teaching him or her quantities, they are more likely to understand math than if you start to teach them numerals.
So even if you are teaching your child addition, show them quantities.
Topics
There are no hard and fast rules about what to teach but we are going to give you a list of important topics to teach and show you how to do them.
Stage 1 topics
Quantity recognition:
​
This involves showing your baby/toddler quantities, 1-100.
​
So, for example; on one piece of half sized A4 paper, you have one dot representing the quantity one. On another piece of paper, you have 2 dots representing the quantity 2. On another piece of paper, you have another dot representing the quantity 3 and so on, until you have 101 pieces of half sized A4 paper with each one representing a quantity from 0 to 100. So, you will also have one blank piece of half sized A4 paper representing zero. You don’t have to do all 100 at once, you can make them in batches of say 20.
As you get to higher quantities then use a whole A4 page as opposed to cutting it in half.
​
You can draw the dots by hand, or you can do it on a computer. If you are doing it on a computer, then go to the Microsoft Word application and select the “Insert” tab, then select the “Shapes” drop down menu and go to the “Basic Shapes” section to select the circle shape. Make sure you increase the shape size to ensure that it is large enough.
See the examples below. The first picture is hand prepared and the second is computer processed
Then, you show it to your child by holding up the piece of paper with one dot on it and say “one”. Then move it away. Then move on to the next quantity.
Do not do them in order such as “one, two, three”. That is teaching them to count, not teaching quantities.
As a tip, write the numerical number at the back of the card so you know what quantity it is. For example; if you have a flash card with 15 dots, you should write number “15” at the back so that you know what number it represents. Otherwise, you are going to have to count it before showing it to your child and this is not ideal.