Teaching kids math doesn’t have to be hard! Essential math skills such as patterning, classifying, and counting can be incorporated into everyday activities like cleaning up toys. Today’s math activities for toddlers use easily found items like blocks, stuffed animals, and rocks. Keep reading to find three math for kids activities that will have the toddlers in your care learning and having fun!
The Sorting Game
This game encourages two-year-olds to clean up their toys and teaches them matching skills at the same time.
- Pick one category, such as blocks, and search for blocks all over the room or house. Your child will enjoy this very much. Make it fun by saying, “Block, block, where are you?” “Oh, here you are!”
- Put all of the blocks into a container.
- Try matching the blocks by size. Pick one block and ask your child to find another of the same size.
- You can also match blocks by color.
- When you have finished with blocks, start looking for other toys.
Getting Into Shapes
You will need blocks of different shapes, such as circles, squares, and triangles to play this game.
- Give your child the square block and let him hold it and feel its shape. Talk about its name and point out other square shapes in the room.
- Give your child another block of a different shape. Talk about this shape.
- Take the first and second blocks and place them into a sack or large bag.
- Hold another square block in your hand. Show it to him and ask him to find the matching shape in the sack.
- At first, he can put his hand into the sack and look at what he takes out. As he gets better at the game, encourage him to identify the shape by feeling the block.
Ones and Twos
Saying the words “one” and “two,” and being able to hold up one or two fingers, does not necessarily mean that a two-year-old understands the concepts. Experiencing numbers using all her senses will help your child acquire that understanding.
- Begin by talking about “a lot,” “a few,” and “one,”
- Assemble blocks in groups of seven, three, and one.
- Talk with your child about which group has a lot of blocks, a few blocks, and one block.
- Ask your child to give you a block.
- Continue placing other objects in groups of a few, a lot, and one. Stuffed animals and rocks are fun to use.
- Each time, ask your child to give you one item.
- When you think that your child understands the concept on “one,” begin introducing the concept of “two”: two socks, two shoes, two hands, two eyes, and so on.
- Play the same game, always including a group of “two.”
From Games to Play with Two Year Olds
If you're looking for more math books for toddlers, check out the complete list of our math resources.
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