Recognize Opportunities To Practice Your Child’s Number Recognition June 3
Number recognition is an important skill which your child is going to need to learn and make use of throughout the rest of her life. And you can begin teaching this skill to her when she is just a toddler. Children can learn to recognize numbers at a fairly young age, and you can help solidify what the numbers mean for her by incorporating counting and number recognition into as many daily activities as possible. Luckily for you, as a good teaching parent, there are opportunities everywhere around you to help you do this.
| Just take a look around you for a moment and see all of the numbers that are visible to you at this moment. The dates on the calendar, the time on your clock, the numbers on your keyboard, the address on the house that you can see through your window; these are all just a few examples of where you can see numbers just from your current seat. Any time that you have downtime with your child, you can point at any one of these numbers to practice number recognition. Simply asking “what number is this?” all throughout the day will help your child to remember her numbers. |
If your child gets bored of the question and answer game, you can incorporate counting in to regular activities to increase the math skills which are associated with number recognition. After all, learning your numbers doesn’t just mean being able to recognize them on a piece of paper; it means being able to associate them with what they mean. When you’re in the grocery store, you can pick up two oranges and show them to your child, pointing out that you have two of the same item. If there is a number 2 visible somewhere around you (and believe me, there will be), you can point it out to draw that crucial link between two items and the number two.
This kind of activity, pointing out what number of something there is, will happen an uncountable number of times throughout the day. Your child will be playing with dolls and you can ask how many dolls she has. Or it will be story time and you can ask if she wants to hear one story or two, pointing to the numbers on whatever material is available around you. And of course, you can also buy toys which specifically teach numbers to your children to assist them in better learning these skills.
The key to being a good teaching parent is to be able to recognize all of the different opportunities that there are to teach your child the skills that she is currently working on learning. Helping yourself to focus on finding these opportunities and introducing them in a casual way will make the whole learning process easier on both of you. Your child will know her numbers before you know it!
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