When camping with your kids, did you know that there are lots of ways to practice some kindergarten readiness math? Let me count the ways….Counting is one of the first math skills that children develop. Count the tent pegs, the number of people in the car, the plates on the picnic table, the towels on the fence, etc. Another skill is comparing: are there more shoes or more people, more marshmallows or more hotdogs, more popcorn or more hands eating it? One-to-one matching seems obvious to adults, but that’s because we know the concept of equal. Helping children learn equal can be done easily: does every person have a swimsuit? There is 1 towel for everybody, that makes how many towels?
Numbers can be very confusing. There is a number on the license plate of the car, but that’s not for how many. When waiting, someone is 1st in line but a whole car of people can be 1st. There’s numbers on the campsite for location. Sigh–it can all add up to be lots of numbers for a little one. So, practicing all the ways that we use numbers is very important for kids and helps with readiness for kindergarten. Camping is 4 counting and 4 lots more, 2. Is that something else to count I see? The ants go marching 1 by 1….