There are easy math games you can play with your child to build the following important math foundational skills using manipulatives with your 4 year old:
- 1-1 Correspondence
- Building Patterns
- Quantity Discrimination
- Sorting Groups
If you are a stay at home parent, or your child just got out of school, you can probably agree it is hard to keep your child engaged in a learning task for a long time! You might want to run to the store and buy a whole bunch of art supplies, learning materials, or not know what skills to practice with your 4 year old. Instead, head to the dollar store and pick up a $1 bag of reptiles and do these 4 games!
Building 1-to-1 Correspondence
Line them up, in rows of 5, and touch and count from left to right!
When counting, it is essential for your child to touch each item when counting to build 1-to-1 correspondence. They need to know that when they say a number, it is connected to an object and a quantity. Have them place each object in a row of 5 and then start a new row underneath. Make sure they count from left to right when they touch and count! Doing this will help them when they start the skill of counting on (5- 6, 7, 8… or 10-11, 12, etc.)
Once your child masters the basic AB pattern, have them build more complex patterns like AAB, AABB, ABC, AABC, etc.
Building patterns is such an important skill! Ask your child make and tell you their pattern, “Lizard, Frog, Lizard, Frog.” Then, ask them to repeat the pattern using letters and numbers. For example ask, “Say your pattern with letters – A, B, A, B.” Now say your pattern with numbers, “1, 2, 1, 2.”
“Which group has more? Which has less? How do you know?
This foundational skill is critical to understanding addition and subtraction. This visual practice will help them understand quantity discrimination when just seeing numerals later on and being able to quickly add and subtract in their head. The key to helping build this skill is to create two columns for the groups and ask, “Which group has more? Which group has less? Which group does not have a partner? Why?”
If your child can answer these questions, have two groups of the same amount. Make sure they are lined up like in the picture above and ask, “Which group has more?” Count each row. “Great, they are the same! Why?” Then, spread one of the lines out spacing the objects further away. Ask the same question and you will see they might say the spaced out line has more. Discuss how it looks different but you did not add any more so they are still the same.
How did you group them? Can you sort them another way?
You can use lots of different items to sort… clothes, food, toys leaves, etc! Ask your child to make two groups and tell you what they two groups are. My son answered, “I made a frogs group and a lizards group.” Ask them to sort a different way! Sort by size, color, shapes, patterns, and more!
I hope this post help you play more math games with your child and ask meaningful questions to boost their understand! Please leave a comment on other math games you like to play with your 4 year old!