Why Early Math Learning Is Important For Your Child?

As you all know parents are always a child's first teacher and they play a vital role in strengthening their numeracy skills from a young age.

Now, all you parents reading this might get this question in your mind. What age is appropriate for introducing numeracy to your kid's life?  

Many of the parents introduce numeracy very late in a child's life at the age when they go to school, this is because of their misconception that children in their early growing years are not ready to grasp the concepts of early mathematics.

Let us tell you all something, infants begin to acquire maths before they can sit up. They start discovering distinct things that we don't notice like the difference in the quantity and size of objects, new patterns, and shapes. In short, they use math concepts very early when they start to play so the age of one to five is the precise time for parents to lay a maths foundation for their kids.

Just to make sure you get clarity of what are the basic math skills & early math concepts to be instilled into your child's mind and how. Let us explain to you what is early math.

Early Math is a Broad Range of Basic concepts such as:

• Counting numbers.
• Perception of quantity if it is more or fewer.
• Identifying shapes such as circles, squares, triangles.
• Understanding spatial relations like over or under, back and forward.
• To have an idea of measurement like which is taller and which is short. 
• Identifying colors and pattern.

Since you have understood the concepts, its time for you to set your expectations right. Children show development gradually over time, so never expect miracles from them. 

We Can Provide you a Glimpse of What Advancement in Math Skills to be Expected Over Time:

• Young Infants can differentiate between small groups of objects, like one versus another object. 
• Children in the age group one to two years use number words to label small quantities like 1 dog or 2 balls.
• Children in the age group two to three years count objects by moving or pointing to them.
• Children in the age group three to four years can swiftly identify small groups of objects without counting such as 1, 2, or 3 balls. 
• Children in the age group four to five years start to add or subtract small quantities such as adding or subtracting 1 or 2 play toys.

Next is your role as a parent in promoting these early math skills.

A fostering parent-child relationship eases children to build self-confidence, courage, and a feeling of surety. 

Do you know what is important for a child's brain development?

A supportive and caring home environment is what is required for significant brain growth and developmental discoveries to occur at a very young age of a child. These developments have long-lasting results in them for school and ahead in life. 

With simple daily life routines, you can achieve this.

• Have a language-rich communication with your children. This can strengthen your relationship as well as arouse children’s cognitive and linguistic development. Use a wide variety of words which will not only improve their vocabulary but when they grow up the vocabulary also increases.
• Read books to them even when they are young infants. This is very influential in developing their language and literacy skills.
• Making children count from one to ten or more is not adequate, it’s just they are repeating the words in order without logical understanding. Instead, you can point out objects to them and provide an idea of counting. Like, differentiate set of balls by a group and count pointing out to them. So next time when you ask for three balls they will get you exactly three numbers.

• Remember when you’re cleaning up your child’s blocks or Lego’s, just remember they are very much involved in building your child's math brains. They are learning measurement with these. They build and compare different towers of blocks as if it is equal or not, or if they want one to be smaller, so in this way, they get an idea of size. 
• Read picture books to your child by pointing out the position and spatial representation of pictures. Tell them if the building is behind the car if the cat is under the table and relate pictures with shapes like the building roof is a triangle. This gives great insight for them regarding spatial representation before entering school.

We recommend you to nurture a strong math foundation from an early age of your child to succeed in a world where a higher percentage of jobs will need critical thinking and analytical skills. 

Early math is just as important as early literacy; in fact, it can improve reading and writing skills. Kids who start with numerical skills even in infancy will do better with math when they reach school. Giving your child the opportunity to get a head-start on math is one of the best things you can do for their future success. As a parent, it is your responsibility to assure them that.

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