The simplest and most effective way to teach children how to count is to count everything aloud with them.
Start from a young age by counting their fingers and toes with rhymes such as this little piggy and 1,2 ,3 ,4 .5 once I caught a fish alive to make it fun.
I always used to count the stairs as we went up and down with both my own children and when I was a registered child minder; each child was fluent in counting to 13- the number of stairs.
Count everything you can: flowers in the garden, ducks on the pond the amount of times you push them on a swing and so on.
Books are another good resource for teaching children to count.
I had a little boy visit a while ago and we sat together to read a counting book. The first page was number 1 and I asked him if he knew what the number was. ” Yes,” he told me with confidence ” It’s 21″
Number recognition here
Children love to tell everyone how old they are and will often hold up the relative number of fingers to demonstrate; count the digits together along with the candles on a birthday cake.
My granddaughter learnt to count and colour and shape recognition from watching videos on her mum’s phone.
Use your child’s interests to learn to count ,whether it’s toy vehicles, dolls or colouring pencils.
It’s not rocket science as with any early learning make it fun through play and children will reap the rewards,
As always questions and comments are welcome.
Until next time.
Karen
x
Linked with
Love this! Super helpful too! I’m currently teaching my youngest 1-5 and she’s mastered up to 4 so far, by using some of these techniques!
That’s fantastic, thanks for sharing, Sarah
I agree, it doesn’t have to be a chore, just simply counting whatever you’re doing helps. I’ve always counted and pointed out numbers to my daughter and she’s been counting proficiently since she was 2. Just constant repetition and drawing attention to things works.
Katrina x
#MischiefandMemories
Absolutely, Katrina, thanks for stopping by and leaving your thoughts and experiences
Definitely agree, we just used to count everything all the time too 🙂 #mischiefandmemories
Glad to hear that you agree with me, Hannah, thanks for stopping by
It is so important to use the children’s interests isn’t it? My son used to love me singing number rhymes xx #mischiefandmemories
Absolutely, Dana
Definitely all about the repetition. We always used counting up and down the stairs too. Thank you for joining us for the #mischiefandmemories linky.
Thanks again for having me as part of your linky, Annette
Counting is such an essential skill and children can pick it up through simple activities or making it part of every day events such as climbing the stairs, baking or mealtime. Thanks for linking up with #MischiefAndMemories
Totally, Laura, thanks for having me as a part of the linky