Teaching young children essential math skills.

As a Pre-K teacher I approach math a bit differently than my Elementary Teacher Friends. While Elementary is mostly focused on numbers and operations the pre-k classroom is focused on concepts that will build math knowledge leading to the operations. Below I have posted some pictures of a math concept packet that my class has just completed.

Here my students completed a matching worksheet that builds visual discrimination skills, a key concept in math. Counting, grouping, matching and sorting are all essential skills used in lifelong learning.

Here my students have placed bugs in order from smallest to largest. Ordering by size, classification by detail and the concept of left to right are not only essential to math but reading as well.

Here my students are classifying by detail, this in particular is by number of legs. Visual discrimination, counting and grouping are all used here on one sheet.

Colors are also considered in early childhood math lessons. Patterns, matching, color words, color recognition, shapes and sizes are all considered essential concepts for early math development.

Distinguishing details is crucial for the type of math children will learn in elementary school. Here my students are completing a page that requies them to match on the left and find those that don't match on the right. This also works on spacial skills and following directions as some of them are not reading yet.

Reinforcing the left to right concept in everything is important because as the children grow math will turn into word problems and all math is also written left to right. The L to R concept is essential to learning in all facets of life so therefore try to reinforce it through all lessons.

Essential Math Skills for Early Childhood:

1. left to right

2. counting

3. grouping

4. sorting

5. patterning

6. classification by detail

7. size

8. position

9.words related to math

10. 1 to 1 correspondence

By introducing and working on the above skills in Pre-K you teach children how math works without truly teaching math in a traditional sense. I am always amazed that in the second half of the year my class is adding and subtracting with little or no traditional adding or subtracting instruction. It becomes natural for the children to take the next steps on their own and essentially teach themselves through the concepts introduced. Also many of these concepts overlap and can be easily combined to boost learning.

By placing all of these skills in one packet I can get a true sense of how my students are doing and any areas that need further development. All of these worksheets are available in my TpT unit, click on the link below to view. Visit my store for more math concept work and follow my blog for more math and literacy ideas to come.

Bug-Jar-Math-Visual-Discrimination-Positional-Words-CountingMore

Till next time,