Family Math Fun!

Math at Home

All kinds of play can help your child with math, in the same way as play helps her learn to talk and understand language.

Here are some things your child will do that will show he is learning math:

puts small things inside big things, and tries to put big things into small things.
guesses whether something will fit in a space.
piles things up until the tower falls down.
asks and understands “when?”

Kids don’t need fancy toys to discover math—they need time to play and notice and try things out. You can help by letting them play.

Activity 2

How Much Does It Hold?

When your child can sit up in the bath tub
Put some empty plastic tubs into your child’s bathtub. Use many different sizes and shapes—tubs that held chip dip, margarine, ice cream, yoghurt, for example. Watch what happens! Your child will use one tub to fill up another, will try to pour all the water in a big tub into a smaller one, will find out that many dips with a small tub are needed to fill a big one, and will feel the difference between pouring a small tub over his head and pouring a big one. This is math learning.