Kindergarten Math Activities: Develop Your Child's Early Math Skills with These Kindergarten Math IdeasYour child needs lots of practice with Kindergarten math activities to gain a strong foundation for math education in all his elementary math years.Use the Kindergarten math ideas contained in this article to help your child master the core skills he should learn in Kindergarten Math: counting from 1-100 and number recognition 1-100 and ability to write all those number accurately. A child who has mastered those core math activities for Kindergarten before the end of the year can be encouraged to begin to learn the math facts. That is addition and subtraction of the number 1-20. Here are free, printable math worksheets we've made for practicing and memorizing the math facts and other first grade math activities.
A great way to help your child learn to count up to 100 is to practice counting while doing activites around the home together. Count all the legos, count coins in the piggy bank, count all the cutlery in the drawer, count all his Pokemon or baseball cards. Just keep finding things to count!! Once you notice your child can accurately count past the 30's then find ways for him to count in the 40's and 50's, etc. Once he gets the hang of it, getting to 100 won't take long.
Another key component in Kindergarten Math Activities is Handwriting. Correct numeral formation is an important part of the Kindergarten Math curriculum. If your child can't successfully form the numerals on his own, you should help him with some tracing activities in the home. It takes more than just ability to hold a pencil to write the numbers correctly. Children all need the finger strength and hand-eye coordination to form the numerals accurately and without reversals. Many children in Kindergarten are still developing their fine motor skills and finger strength. Kumon educational publishing offers terrific Kindergarten Math Activities workbooks to help your child master handwriting skills, counting skills, telling time and more. These fun, inexpensive workbooks use mazes, dot-to-dots and color by number activities to help your child with handwriting and number recognition 1-100. I highly recommend using this books at home to help your child master fine motor skills. Your child will love the fun number games like: dot-to-dot, mazes, color-by-number, etc. These activities start off pretty easy and then increase the challenge as the child progresses in the book. Here's an article and a few photos I took of my own Kindergarten daughter's progress with handwriting when she used the Preschool math activities in Kumon workbooks. For example, Maze walls get thinner challenging the child to write a steadier line... dot-to-dots go longer and with more challenging patterns to follow, helping the child count higher and hold the pencil steadier for accuracy... color-by-numbers get harder with children having to distinguish between similar looking numbers... 56 and 65... in the correct areas to color. These Kumon books are great sources for fun Kindergarten math Activities your child will love to do at home with you!
Encourage your child to complete a page or two a day and you'll see a tremendous improvement by the time he or she finishes the book. You might want to check out my article about how my own daughter improved her Kindergarten Math skills using the Kumon books. Attention and Concentration Skills: Finally, its important that your Kindergartner begin to develop a stronger attention span and better concentration skills. These aren't Kindergarten Math activities per se, but are important early academic skills applicable to his or her classroom experience in general. Kindergarten is usually the year when your child will be expected to sit at a desk for long periods of time, follow directions given to the group at large, complete tasks in an allotted time, and not distract or interrupt the teacher or classmates. There is generally much less playtime in Kindergarten than your child was used to having in preschool or at home with you. Your child will be so much more receptive to the Kindergarten math ideas she's exposed to if she can sit quietly in a desk and listen attentively to her teachers There are so many great ways to help your child develop stronger concentration and attention skills. Just doing activities like reading out loud to your child or listening to an audio book, bead stringing, or following directions to build lego structures can really help your child develop these skills. At the same time, you want to limit TV and computer game time, as these are proven attention/concentration inhibitors. !!! Here are great articles devoted to improving concentration for preschoolers (and Kindergarteners) and tips for developing attention skills in children with math learning disability and other academic disorders.
If your will be entering Kindergarten without ever entering preschool, you should learn the math goals for preschool math. Does your child LOVE to play with the Thomas and Friends trains and tracks? (Mine did when they were in Kindergarten.) Learn about the math and motor skills your child gains while playing with these wonderful toys! Learn more about what's coming next year in 1st Grade Math. Go Back to the Sensible Math Education home page. Go back to the top of this page about Kindergarten Math Activities. New! CommentsHave your say about what you just read! Leave me a comment in the box below. |
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In Early Childhood Math Education children need to learn conceptual number awareness as well as develop fine motor skills to help them begin to form the numerals.
Before a child can begin to write his letters or numbers, he needs to strengthen his small muscles in the fingers.
Children with shaky or weak fingers will try to avoid writing. It's hard for them and makes them feel less than competent.
Your job as the educationally-involved parent is to provide your child with lots of activities that make their little fingers become stronger... without the child knowing it!
| Tangrams for Finger Steadiness | Lacing Cards for Pincer Grip |
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| Pick-Up-Sticks for Finger Steadiness | Learn to Form the Numerals |
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| Develop Fine Motor Control Through Cutting | Rubber Band Play for Finger Strengthening |
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Peruse more fine motor activities at Amazon.com
| Attention Parents! Have you found a few fun, clever ways to teach math concepts to your preschooler? Share a story about some preschool math activities or numbers-related game you do with your child, and read ideas other preschool parents have shared, too. |