30+ Play-Based Ways to Teach Math to Preschool Children

Published Date: 11/24/21

Play-based math lessons for children ages 0–5

Even before children reach preschool age, they start to develop their mathematical skills as they interact with — and learn from — the world around them. When the skills they learn relate to numbers and math, they’re known as early math skills, which are the skills and concepts a child builds during the first few years of their life.

Babies: Math skills learned at 0–12 months old

Children develop math skills from birth!

Toddlers: Math skills learned at 1–2 years old

Preschoolers: Math skills learned at 3–4 years old

Play-based approaches are the best way to develop math skills in preschoolers.

Kindergarten: Math skills learned at 5–6 years old

How to teach math to preschoolers

and learning math is no exception. But, you don’t need to spend hours setting up math lessons — there are play-based ways to incorporate math into almost everything you do. Remember, math skills go far beyond counting, addition, and subtraction. Math is problem solving, estimation, spatial relations, representation, patterns, and more.

31 Ways to teach preschoolers math

Board games, like Count Your Chickens, develop math skills like counting.

. Cards are filled with numbers, shapes, colors, and patterns. War is a super simple game to play to help preschoolers remember which numbers are bigger and which are smaller.

are all opportunities to practice math skills, not just by matching, but when you count how many matches each person has. You can pick one up with your child’s favorite character or use a deck of cards you have on hand.

I Spy books are filled with riddles and help develop math skills in toddlers.

Music is such an important component of child development and is also a great tool to help preschoolers learn math! and Spotify have large collections of songs that help develop math skills in preschool children, or just ask

Find everyday opportunities to incorporate play-based math into your child’s day.

Most parents give their children and nowadays, there are so many apps available that incorporate play-based learning, including math. It’s hard to know where to look and which ones are actually good. This list of is a great place to start, since it’s broken down by academic category as well as age.

Hopscotch is a game of numbers and a fun play-based math lesson for children!

are a super engaging way to help preschoolers learn math. Tangrams are a Chinese geometric puzzle that has seven pieces. The pieces can be rearranged to make other shapes.

Tangrams, like these from We Are Mom Friends, develop math skills like spatial relations and problem solving.

Legos offer so many opportunities to practice math, including counting, geometry, grouping, patterns, addition, and subtraction.

Make learning math fun

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Originally published at https://www.paperpinecone.com on November 25, 2021.