Children who do puzzles, with build with building blocks or a let a toy train race around, not only have lots of fun. They also train important spatial thinking and thus learn math in a fun way. This also includes that children learn terms like "in front of", "behind", "next to" or "under" for spatial relationships to know. Otherwise they find it difficult to orient themselves in the "number space".
When the little ones are enrolled, most can count to 20. Counting can already be practiced playfully before school when climbing stairs or setting the table. It helps with the first arithmetic operations, which only later in a child's development occur abstractly and automatically in the head.
Long before real arithmetic is done in first grade, children acquire a basic understanding of the world of numbers through play: For example, when they move forward four spaces once and two spaces another time when rolling the dice, and the next player catches up with a "six". All of this encourages thinking about numbers and building a basic understanding of this mathematical world.
Ideas to learn math in everyday life learn
Math is everywhere: in the prices in the mail-order catalog, in house numbers, in the time on the clock and in the pattern that the little ones create when stringing a string a necklace or with create with wooden tiles. It's always worth talking about it.
For solid math skills, students later can't avoid practicing – more or less depending on aptitude. "Breaking numbers apart, mental arithmetic, these are central skills that children need for all arithmetic operations," says Andrea Peter-Koop. And the times tables must be mastered so that students can concentrate on the subsequent calculation steps. "A few minutes of practice every day, perhaps unannounced in the car or before dinner, are usually enough," the professor says. "'We still have to learn math,' on the other hand, comes across as rather off-putting to children. And mathematics doesn't have to be that way!"
Learn arithmetic playfully with our games
1. Counting is the beginning
With counting rhymes, clapping and counting games like HABA Counting Fun the little ones learn the first numbers and their order. In family games with a number die, the aim is to recognize the face of the die and translate it into steps on the game board or other actions. What is exciting for children is the experience that you can count or hop not only forwards but also backwards or in small leaps.
2. Setting the table – How many plates do we need?
When the sweets are distributed fairly among the siblings or something is to be given away, children develop a first understanding of arithmetic operations. Thinking is also required when setting the table: "Dad isn't here today, how many plates do we need then?" And because things sometimes fall when children set the table, our colorful Melamine tableware super practical, because it is particularly high-quality and shatterproof!
3. Seesaws and weighing
3 children = 1 dad? How can you keep the playground seesaw balanced? Children marvel that there are many ways to make the seesaw hover. For experimenting, our HABA beam balance with two pans. Then even apples can be compared with pears. And how can it be that a large wad of cotton weighs less than a small apricot?
4. For tilers and pattern designers
Placement games with geometric shapes they keep children occupied for a long time; the different motifs that can be created with circles, triangles, squares and rectangles are so fascinating. Even preschool children thus learn that, for example, two triangles can form a rectangle. Symmetries and patterns also emerge as mathematical features.
5. Sorting – Not just for neat freaks
Arrange the toy cars by color or rather by size? Putting away your own clothes: socks with socks, shirts with shirts. Or in the HABA Orchard Game the apples, plums, pears and cherries to the correct tree – when sorting, children form and recognize higher-level categories – a first form of abstraction.
6. For stackers and little builders
When the art of building with building blocks from small to large and other materials into three dimensions, young builders not only develop an initial understanding of statics, but also train their spatial imagination as well as their knowledge of geometric solids. Even if they do not yet know the words cuboid, cylinder, pyramid or cone, children "grasp" that, for example, they can create a new, larger solid from two cuboids, or that the base areas of a cone and a cylinder can be the same.
