Teachers know that math activities have never been among the most popular activities for kindergartners. But you can help them learn math in a way that will reframe how your students view math.
In Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds, authors Pam Schiller and Lynne Peterson Brown offer hundreds of math activities for kids. They also show how math easily incorporates into indoor activities for kids on rainy days.
Schiller and Peterson offer their tips to make math fun for kindergarten:
- Children are more motivated to learn when the material is interesting and meaningful to them. Use familiar objects that they associate with fun events, such as birthday candles for counting, sorting and classifying toys from home and evenly distributing cookies to classmates.
- Take the activity outside! Let them sort pebbles, leaves or seeds. When children control, manipulate and arrange objects, they internalize concepts and make sense of the world.
- Think outside the box - Children need many opportunities to touch, taste, smell, listen to and visually explore a variety of materials to learn about their multiple attributes or properties. Free exploration helps children see similarities and differences in objects when they begin to practice classification. For example, sorting objects based on their smell or texture.
- Make it tasty! Math is also a yummy opportunity to teach healthy eating habits when the kids sort, stack and divide up pieces of fruit, vegetables and crackers.
Find more tips and great activities in Count on Math.
Author(s)Pam Schiller, Lynne Peterson Brown
