Tips and products for teaching math to your pre-schooler or kindergartner…
I recently noticed some of the hundreds of pieces of paper that my daughter brings from pre-school each day were math adjacent. They were looking at shapes and sizes of different objects. I asked my 5 year old if she enjoyed that assignment and she gave me a disinterested “yes.” That was all I needed to get convinced that I had a little Will Hunting on my hands. I digitally ran to Amazon. I couldn’t immediately find an interesting math book for pre-schoolers, so I decided to get aspirational and purchase the 1st grade edition
I was certain that my daughter was ready for a lot of math in this book, but I figured I had a couple years to get her completely up to speed.
The book starts off slow, with object counting. It then moves onto to addition, number lines, subtraction, story problems, place value using blocks, two digit addition and finishes up with charts and picture graphs. We’ve made it to page 75 of 250 and we’re just getting to two digit addition and subtraction. I’ve really like the pace and the concept building that’s taken place and I feel like my daughter is really learning. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how she’s picked up on the different concepts. I think a lot of the credit goes to the structure of the book. For anyone else looking to take this journey with your young reader, I have a few tips:
- Take it very, very slow – Each night, we’ll try to do as many problems as we can until she begins to get bored. Sometimes thats a single problem and sometimes it’s a page. I think the most important thing I can do is keep it fun and make sure she remains excited to do the math. If she dreads the activity when I bring it up, I’m doing it wrong.
- Take it slow, but this can also be the time to teach focus – While I don’t make her do many problems each night, if we start a problem, I also ask that she finishes it. It’s hilarious to watch her focus wander mid-problem, often to something that happened very hours before that she just HAS to tell me while trying to add 3 and 4. She’s responded when I ask her to focus on the problem and tell me the story in a minute. In my 22 years of school, I really don’t think I ever learned to properly focus. If it’s actually possible to improve focus through practice, then I hope this small step yields dividends down the road.
- You’ve got to teach yourself how to teach – Assuming they only have 10 fingers, how would you teach your child to add 6+5? There are a bunch of scenarios like this in the book, where you’re having to consider how to explain a concept that at this point comes naturally to you. On the 6+5 front, I ultimately told her since she already has 6, she can count up 5 (using her fingers) to get the right answer. This will work until we get to double digit addition and a better understanding of number relationships will be required.
- You may learn some things about learning – When you’re teaching basic mathematical concepts, you realize how much of everything you know is memorization. When I see 17+17, I’m not working back to some basic understanding of numbers, I’m simply recalling that the answer is 34. I find myself doing the same thing when we’re practicing reading. Yes, I know how to sound things, but at this point almost all reading is recall. Children don’t have that luxury, so you’re going much deeper into the fundamentals than you have in years.
- Be patient and celebrate the wins – If you spend a little time a few nights on a week on this book (or something like it), you’ll be amazed at the progress your child makes. I was shocked that we could come back to the book the following day and use the learnings from the previous day. I thought my daughter was barely paying attention and yet she was carrying concepts over each and every day. I’ve made a point to celebrate the wins to the point where she’s expecting confetti to come down from the ceiling when she gets one right. It’s fun and it seems to make her want to keep doing it each day.
- You’re building confidence – I had a few goals when I purchased this book.
- Have an educational activity that I could do each night with my daughter, as the stick to the carrot of some television before bed.
- Get her familiar with math so she’ll be comfortable when these concepts are introduced in the future. If she’s prepared, math is one less thing she’ll need to stress about later
- Through practice, give her confidence in her abilities. One of the most annoying parts of being a parent is the times you have to say “NO” when you can tell your kid is just trying to have fun. It’s lame and it makes you feel old. Even with something is small as this math book, she’s doing a “grown up” activity and has some agency. She’s super excited when she gets a problem right and I can see she feels good about herself for figuring it out.
I’ll update you in a few months as to whether we were able to finish the book. I see some rough sailing ahead with some of the concepts. But even if she doesn’t quite understand them yet, it can’t hurt to introduce them. She may even surprise me.