Mum and Dad Maths
5 ways parents and carers can build maths confidence in early learners.
BY BONNIE LAXTON-BLINKHORN, KINDICARE
Raise your hand if calculus causes a cold sweat!
While some grownups speak the language of maths, for others it’s the stuff of nightmares, a nightmare we could, unwittingly, be sharing with our children!
To combat the problem of intergenerational maths aversion (not a technical term), and to shed light on the importance of boosting confidence in this area, the maths loving folk at Early Childhood Australia (ECA) and the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers (AAMT) have released a paper explaining why maths is important in the early years.
The report says it’s super important that children are supported to develop a constructive attitude to maths in early childhood and highlights the crucial role of adults in providing a ‘positive, engaging and encouraging environment that promotes imagination, problem-solving and sense-making’.
The thinking is that if children develop a good outlook to maths when they are young, this will carry through and support educational achievement and confidence as they make the leap to big school and beyond.
While early childhood teachers have a key role in building confidence and curiosity when it comes to maths, the experts say that parents and carers are important too.
Don’t worry though, this doesn’t mean dusting off the old textbooks, it’s more a case of switching up the mindset.
ECA and AAMT say that while most children are naturally inquisitive about mathematics their experiences shape their attitudes, and that’s why it’s important for us adults to project positivity, even if we don’t feel it!
This can be as simple as encouraging children to practice ‘everyday’ maths and taking advantage of opportunities for learning that happen in homes, cars, parks and on public transport or using ‘maths talk’ to help children understand foundational ideas.
To learn how to put these ideas into practice we spoke to, Debbie Andriopoulos, the Education and Curriculum Manager at Rise & Shine Education.
Rise & Shine know a thing or two about STEM education and they love maths!
This pioneering service has developed a state-of-the-art learning environment in the heart of Sydney’s inner-west called the Orbit Centre of Imagination.
The Orbit Hub, which is the first of its kind in Australia, offers children aged three-six the chance to participate in an amazing range of hands-on experiences designed to ignite the imagination and stimulate curiosity and innovative thinking.
Children enrolled at Rise & Shine Kindergarten visit the Orbit Hub as an extension of their daily curriculum, where they work with educators to develop their mathematical knowledge through a range of experiences, which encourage them to question, hypothesise, predict and problem solve.
While Debbie’s role is to support directors and educators to deliver the innovative child focused curriculum at Rise & Shine, she says parents are, in fact, a child’s first teacher and therefore, the first, “To introduce them to the wonderful world of mathematics!”
Similar to the crew at ECA and AAMT, Debbie says the frontline position of parents means it’s great if they take an active role in developing children’s basic maths skills as it sets a strong foundation for future learning and development.
This basically means harnessing opportunities for incidental learning.
“Maths is all around us! Children use maths concepts to make sense of their world. They connect these concepts with their environment and the people surrounding them,” explains Debbie.
Debbie says children are aware of concepts such as patterns, shapes, size, length and weight from a very young age, and all a parent or carer needs to do to extend this awareness is incorporate these ideas into everyday life.
Easier said than done? We asked Debbie to suggest five easy ways parents can achieve this. Here’s what she suggested:
1. Make the most of incidental learning, for example when you are out and about, you could count the cars, traffic lights, or trees together.
2. Encourage children to be involved in setting the table for mealtimes, for example one plate/glass/fork for each person. This teaches them the concept of one-to-one correspondence, which is the skill of counting one object as you say one number. You could also do this in the supermarket by counting apples into a bag.
3. Play matching games such as Memory or Snap. Debbie says this helps children develop their identifying skills.
4. When children are playing with their toys discuss size, for example, the tennis ball is small, and the soccer ball is big, this helps children better understand the concepts of size and shape.
5. Above all be positive and make maths fun!
If you are keen to learn more about maths in the early years check out the ECA/AAMT position paper on early childhood mathematics here and if you are really keen get some amazing maths inspo on WooTube, the YouTube channel run by Sydney mathematics teacher Eddy Woo. His Play School clips are perfect for preschoolers.