Recognize Opportunities To Practice Your Child’s Number Recognition

By TheNanny612 On June 3, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Number recognition
is an important skill which your child is going to need to learn and make use
of throughout the rest of her life. And you can begin teaching this skill to
her when she is just a toddler. Children can learn to recognize numbers at a
fairly young age, and you can help solidify what the numbers mean for her by
incorporating counting and number recognition into as many daily activities
as possible. Luckily for you, as a good teaching parent, there are opportunities
everywhere around you to help you do this.

Just
take a look around you for a moment and see all of the numbers that are
visible to you at this moment. The dates on the calendar, the time on
your clock, the numbers on your keyboard, the address on the house that
you can see through your window; these are all just a few examples of
where you can see numbers just from your current seat. Any time that you
have downtime with your child, you can point at any one of these numbers
to practice number recognition. Simply asking “what number is this?”
all throughout the day will help your child to remember her numbers.

If your child gets bored
of the question and answer game, you can incorporate counting in to regular
activities to increase the math skills which are associated with number recognition.
After all, learning your numbers doesn’t just mean being able to recognize
them on a piece of paper; it means being able to associate them with what they
mean. When you’re in the grocery store, you can pick up two oranges and
show them to your child, pointing out that you have two of the same item. If
there is a number 2 visible somewhere around you (and believe me, there will
be), you can point it out to draw that crucial link between two items and the
number two.

This kind of activity, pointing
out what number of something there is, will happen an uncountable number of
times throughout the day. Your child will be playing with dolls and you can
ask how many dolls she has. Or it will be story time and you can ask if she
wants to hear one story or two, pointing to the numbers on whatever material
is available around you. And of course, you can also buy toys which specifically
teach numbers to your children to assist them in better learning these skills.

The key to being a good teaching
parent is to be able to recognize all of the different opportunities that there
are to teach your child the skills that she is currently working on learning.
Helping yourself to focus on finding these opportunities and introducing them
in a casual way will make the whole learning process easier on both of you.
Your child will know her numbers before you know it!

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