Numbers, numbers, numbers, they are everywhere. This is why it is important to really focus
on number recognition and start money identification early. So, we have to think of teaching numbers like
we approached words. Words started with
us repeating or labeling everything.
There were times when I found myself literally narrating my own actions
every step of each day. Now, I find
myself counting everything, bowls, ingredients, sometimes even steps. This helps with the act of counting but
visually seeing the numbers and recognizing them is a different beast. So, what do you do?
Sometimes, the best tool you have is something you use every
day. I was looking through the ads and
usually allow the kids to play with the ones that I won’t use. They normally pretend to be reading them or
ball them up and pretend they are some form of soup, but today I sat down with
them and we laid them out on the tables.
I asked them to look for numbers they recognized and the older kids lit
up pointing to this and that number.
The
younger kids got excited and started paying attention to what the older kids
were doing and they started pointing to numbers they were remembering. Typically, these numbers seemed to be 8’s,
5’s, and 2’s. The younger kids started
looking on their own and so I moved to the next step with the older kids and
pointed out the cent sign and the dollar sign and started talking about
money.
We focused on telling the
difference between dollars and cents using the signs and the 3 year old was on
top of that task searching the ads for the signs to show me. The four year old started learning about
actual money amounts using decimals. It
was funny how what normally goes in the recycling became an important learning
tool that kept us having fun for an hour!
When looking for ways to teach your kids start with looking
around your house!
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