Kindergarten and Preschool Math - What skills do I teach?
Throughout the year, when teaching kindergarten and preschool math, provide opportunities for students to solve problems that use the skills of classification, matching, building number sets, making patterns, comparing objects and recording information.
Listed below are links to each specific math area that include the skills students need to learn, as well as ideas for kindergarten and preschool math activities and games.
Kindergarten and preschool math topics
Although specific requirements vary geographically, generally young children should have lots of math experiences in the following areas:
- Counting, number and number operations
- Sorting and sequencing objects - help children associate things that belong together
- Classification- games that teach classification skills
- Patterns - provide experiences for child to respond to situations where pattern may occur
- Measurement - calendar activities and comparing time, temperature, area, length
- Geometry - 3D objects and 2-D shapes & spatial sense
- Teach symmetry...
- Graphs and tallies - statistics and probability - representing information with pictures and things
- Money - coin vocabulary and simple counting
- Fractions - how to teach
Teacher Tip: The skill areas on the specific pages above range from Pre K to grade two. Not all children will be at the same level before and after participating in math activities.
Number Operations
- Introduce students to the number operations of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing with concrete objects / educational learning materials.
- Have students record their learning with words and pictures.
Children who have plenty of hands on math experiences will feel more confident about themselves as young mathematicians and appreciate that there is value in learning math.
How to teach math pages:
Page 1: How do kids learn math?
Page 2: What to teach...
Page 3: Teach math vocabulary...
Math activities table of contents:
How to teach math successfully:
Teaching kindergarten and preschool math - how kids learn math
Kindergarten and preschool math - What skills do I teach?
Teaching math with manipulatives:
Teaching with math manipulatives- helping students get it...
Ten steps to teaching with math manipulatives - an example...
Best math manipulatives - choose products that teach more than one math concept
Teaching math vocabulary:
Vocabulary - how to teach math vocabulary
Specific areas of the math curriculum:
GEOMETRY & SPATIAL SENSE
GEOMETRY - What geometry and spatial skills should I teach? Geometry activities
ATTRIBUTE BLOCKS -Teach logical thinking, geometry and spacial sense
SORTING - Develop classification skills with kindergarten sorting games
CLASSIFICATION - teach classification vocabulary an skills with games
SYMMETRY -Teach early learners about symmetry
GEOMETRY GAMES - simple games that reinforce geometry concepts
PATTERN
Pattern 1- what pattern skills do students need to learn? Teaching tips
Pattern 2- ideas and games to recognize, create, copy and extend patterns
Pattern page three - help children know what you mean when you say"pattern"
NUMBER SENSE
Number Activities - how to provide experiences that build number sense
Learning Numbers - more activities to help children learn numbers
Number Games - how to improve children's number sense with easy games
Number Skills - what number skills do children need to know?
GRAPHING AND DATA ENTRY
Graphing 1 - what do I teach? how do kids collect data and organize it?
Graphing 2 - what do we graph? sample graphing lesson
Check out the SCIENCE section for more graphing and data collection ideas
MEASUREMENT
Teaching measurement - measurement skills and ideas to teach them
MONEY
Teach about money skills & activities
Teach about money with games
Teach about money with fundraising projects
CONNECT MATH AND LITERATURE
Math & literature connections - books increase mathematical thinking
Ten Apples Up On Top! - open-ended math activity with a Dr. Suess book...
10 Little Rubber Ducks - ideas to promote math with this wonderful Eric Carle story
1, 2, 3 to the Zoo - practice counting, making number sets, ordinal numbers and more
One Hundred Hungry Ants - practice counting larger numbers and comparing single file to sets of 10s
Share your favorite book that connects math to literature
Math index- just math pages
