Learning to Count - 1 2 3...

When I first became a parent, I was under the impression that the way children learn to count was teaching them their numbers.... 1, 2, 3, 4. I thought they learn their numbers by us showing them flashcards or writing numbers down for them to see. It wasn't until I went to a convention for specialty toy retailers (ASTRA) and heard speaker Dr. Jane Healy speak that I realized I was dead wrong about how kids learn to count. Dr. Jane Healy has made it her life long study researching how the child's brain works and learns. She has written several books including "Your Child's Growing Mind: Brain Development and Learning from birth to adolescence".

I learned that children learn first through hands on play. In fact, this is necessarily precursor to learning the abstractions such as the numerals 1, 2, and 3. Kids begin to learn though simple hands on touching, feeling and observing. We might see a kid stacking blocks, lining up play cars or dropping toys. To us it is a kid "just playing", but to the child it is learning about how the world works through a beginning lesson in gravity and numbers.

One of the best instruments for learning to count and beginning to understand mathematics is unit blocks. Unit blocks are of proportional sizes which help build kid's understanding of proportions, counting and fractions. Kids begin to understand that 2 of the 1/2 size block makes up one of the full size block, and 4 of the triangles make the same size as one full block and so forth. Child learning experts tell us that unit blocks help with other math skills too including area, size, order, space, shape, numbers, mapping, patterns, measuring, fractions, operations, estimating, negative space, adding, one on one correspondence, and seriation.

Next time you are tempted to reach for the flashcards for you smart little preschooler... reach into the toybox instead.