Math is everywhere in child care, and it's more than just learning numbers. When children sort crayons by color, put puzzles together, build with blocks, count their raisins during snack and sing "Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed," they are learning about math. These kinds of hands-on learning activities create a solid foundation for children to understand shapes, sizes, length, addition and subtraction. Children who have the opportunity to learn math-related concepts in early childhood often do better in school and are more skilled at using math as an adult.
High-quality child care programs provide young children with many opportunities to sort and classify, find similarities and differences, measure and estimate and solve problems. For more information on how to support and nurture young children's developing math skills, see the following articles. If you are looking for specific math activities for your child care program, check out the Hands-on Activities for Child Care database.
- Young Children's Developing Math Skills
- Basic Math Skills in Child Care: One-to-one Correspondence and Counting
- Basic Math Skills in Child Care: Creating Patterns and Arranging Objects in Order
- Basic Math Skills in Child Care: Subtraction and Addition
- Basic Math Skills in Child Care: Shapes and Spatial Relations
- Basic Math Skills in Child Care: Matching, Classifying and Measuring
