Kindergarten is an exciting time in your student’s early literacy and mathematical development! Kindergarten is where many of them have their first classroom experience, so they learn what classroom expectations are and appropriate peer interactions. It is also where their building blocks of math skills develop so it is crucial they go into first grade on grade level. The best part about working with your kindergarten student at home is you can incorporate math into ANY part of your day.
The following concepts are what your student should leave kindergarten knowing and being able to do:
- 1:1 correspondence- understanding that one object represents the number 1, two objects represent the number 2, and so on up to 20.
- Add and subtract within 10 (it is still appropriate to do this with fingers, objects or pictures)
- Count by 1’s and 10’s up to 100
- Identify all 2D shapes and begin reasoning with their attributes (for example, a square has four sides, triangle three sides, circle no sides, and so on)
- Identify greater and less than (NOT using symbols, for example, being able to look at two groups of objects and identify which one has more and which one has less)
Here are some activities to do at home with your student to address these skills:
- Give your student 10 cheerios (or M&M’s, skittles, basically anything that can double as a snack!) and have them break their cheerios into two groups to make different combinations of 10 (i.e. 7+3, 9+1, 5+5, etc.). To make it more challenging, you can take turns with your student doing “mystery number”, where you take some cheerios away and hide them in your hand, then after counting how many are left out, they have determine the number that is inside your hand.
- Count to 100 songs- youtube exactly that and your student will pick out their favorite song!
- Count to 100 by 10’s doing any form of movement (jumping jacks, hopping, skipping, sit ups, whatever your student enjoys)
- Point out shapes to them EVERYWHERE you go and ask them if they see any shapes that they know and to tell you about that shape
- Greater/less than concepts can also be used anywhere- at the dinner table, the store, wherever!
The biggest thing about kindergarten math skills is to just incorporate it into any and everything you can!
