Playful Math

I checked out an Usborne book from the library that had plenty of simple ideas for teaching math skills in the early years through play. I mostly was interested to find out what math skills I need to focus on with Norah through preschool. I was pleasantly surprised to find that she has encountered many of these ideas just through our daily lives. The book has lots of great activities, most are common sense, but I made a list of some that I thought would be easy for us to implement at home. Many of them Elyse can join in with us too. I thought I'd start choosing an activity or two each day to incorporate into our school.

1. Starting to Count
1. One to one correspondence
2. Pair objects
3. Sets
4. Real life counting
5. Patterns
6. Reading numbers
7. Number Bingo
8. Dot-to-Dots
9. Simple Board Games
10. Writing Numbers
11. Play shop
12. Ordinal Numbers
2. Shape & Space
1. Use position words
2. Do treasure hunts using position words
3. Simon Says
4. Blocks, legos, shape sorters, puzzles
5. Use shape names when possible
6. Cut out shapes
7. Playdough shapes
8. Print/Stamps
9. Shapes I Spy
10. Put shapes in a feely bag, guess which shapes 
11. Use recyclables to make a craft
12. Symmetry
3. Sorting 
1. Sort and organize items (Norah loves to do this on her own)
4. Patterns
1. Notice patterns, especially in nature
2. Do pattern rubbings
3. Draw simple patterns
4. Paper cutting patterns
5. Threading Toys/Beads
6. Blocks
7. Musical rhythms
5. Ordering/Sequencing
1. Nesting dolls, stacking rings
2. Lay out number cards or dominoes in order from 1-5 and have her choose which number is missing
6. Adding/Subtracting
1. Lots of real life/real object examples
2. Use fingers, especially for common number bonds (i.e. 3 and 7 make 10)
7. Measuring
1. Taller, shorter, longer
2. Cooking
3. Heavier, lighter
4. Volume, capacity (sand and water play, which we do daily)
5. Estimating - is this enough?
8. Time
1. Calendar, daily schedule
2. Starting to use a clock

The book went on to multiplication and division, but obviously that won't be for a while. Though many of these math skills we already encounter in normal life, this list gives me many good ideas to draw from to keep guiding Norah in math. I was reading about Classical Conversations a while ago, and saw that they don't do any formal math instruction till much later, (around age 10 I think?) The reason is that so much of early math can be taught through play, real life, and informal instruction. As someone who had a difficult relationship with math textbooks, and who has tutored many kids struggling with basic math, I'm excited about seeing number skills being incorporated into daily life in a pleasant way.