Teaching Numbers to Young Kids: Ideas for Parents

How Can I Make Numbers Fun for My Young Child?

Counting with Babies

Parents often naturally teach their babies to count by using fingers, toes, noses, eyes and ears. Expand on this by counting things everywhere you go with your baby or child, including cars, trees, flowers and people. Even if your baby is too young to join in, he'll enjoy the game and begin to learn numbers painlessly.

You can incorporate many counting rhymes that have been recited for generations, such as One Potato, Two Potato; One, Two, Tie My Shoe or Five Little Monkeys. Some of these have finger plays to add to the fun, and many also have music.

Learning through Books

Kids, including toddlers, love to read books with parents, siblings or grandparents. There are a number of books that teach counting and number recognition for very young kids, including Let's be Silly with Jae, Counting Numbers by Charyn Eagan and Little People Numbers with Teacher Terry by Fisher-Price.

Some books are even designed as stacking games or dry erase activity boards. Two good examples of these are Learning Block Books: Numbers, Colors, Shapes and Animals by Susan Estelle Kwas and Board Dudes Dry Erase Activity Book - Letters, Numbers, Shapes & Games by Board Dudes.

Using Objects

Young children often learn best with hands-on, interactive activities. When you're teaching numbers to your child, you may want to let her work with small objects that can be used for counting, such as dried beans or buttons. Ask her to count out a certain number and then show her how the number of beans or buttons matches up to a written number. For example, if she counts out three objects, she can match them up to the number three.

An abacus is also fun for learning to count and can later be used as a calculator. Magnetic numbers can be used on the refrigerator door or a cookie sheet. Toys are made that help little ones learn to match colors and numbers, such as Little People Builders Build 'n Carry Matching Numbers by Fisher-Price.

Finding Internet Resources

You can find a large assortment of free, printable worksheets from websites such as KidZone (www.kidzone.ws). These activity sheets give your child numbers to trace and pictures matching the numbers to color. By using these pages, your kid can work up to being able to do connect-the-dot pictures. Games for matching numbers and pictures are also enjoyable activities for young kids.

There are number of free games on the Internet that children as young as three can play, such as PrimaryGame's Fishy Count (www.primarygames.com). Counting games from Curious George, Sesame Street, The Electric Company and other TV shows are available at PBS Kids (pbskids.org).