Easy as 1 2 3

No we are not suggesting multiplication flash cards for three month olds. However, on Saturday November 7th, Kimberly Kinsella introduced 35 Acre Early Childhood Educators to new ways to include math concepts in the daily activities in family child care homes for children even as young as infants. Kimberly is an adjunct faculty member at Middlesex Community College with years of experience in the early childhood education field. She feels that it is never too young to help children learn about math and that a family childcare home is the perfect setting to begin to offer these skills. Participants learned how to incorporate mathematical activities that promoted concepts such as number sense, one-to-one correspondence, classifying, sorting, patterns, measurement and graphing with a mixed age group of children The workshop included "hands-on" opportunities to explore and create a wide range of math curriculum materials made from simple, low-cost supplies that educators could then use in their family child care homes.

Examples

For Infants
Viewing designs with bold contrasts - books, mobiles etc.
Play lively children's music for infants to listen to. Beats and rhythms are all about numbers.

For Toddlers
Finger games- Five Little Monkeys
Great counting books- One Moose, Twenty Mice, by Clare Beaton
Tall Towers Falling Down - Help toddlers stack large colorful blocks and show them how they can be knocked down. Count blocks as you stack them or as you pick them back up.
Fitting large puzzle pieces into place

For Preschoolers
Cooking activities- measuring
Counting snacks
Data Graphs - The Hungry Caterpillar (Graphing the foods the caterpillar ate)
Sorting and classifying objects by color, shape, or size.

A great resource for educators is Much More Than Counting by Sally Moomaw and Brenda Hieronymus.