Is math merely counting?

How to make your child fall in love with math? There are three recipes that make math nutritious and tasty: math is life; math is settling the problems; math is communicating with others. If you want your child to be fond of math, communicate with your child frequently and solve the math problem in your child's real life. Why should I lay stress on the development of early math skills in children?

Studies show that the better the child's early math ability is, the better both the math and the ability to read are afterwards. Many kindergartens in the United States realize the significance of mathematics. Furthermore, They have already begun to carry out STEM education for young children. STEM (Science, technology,engineering and Mathematics) is science education, and M means mathematics in it.

However, we Chinese parents have a lot of understanding of mathematics based on the impression of exam-oriented education. Maybe they are lack of a systematic understanding of mathematics except that they have done math problems at school. Suppose we regard mathematics as food, in order to cultivate children's mathematical ability, we should give them three thinking packages: Mathematical thinking, geometrical thinking and measurement thinking.

Package One: Mathematical thinking

For the baby, mathematical thinking is understanding numbers and operations. Many of us first get the first mathematical enlightenment by reciting the numbers from 1 to 10, which is really a good method to understand numbers. However, reciting the numbers is not equal to "count" and reciting numbers fluently from memory is not equal to understand the number itself.

I've met two and a half year old children who could recite the numbers fluently from 1 to 100. His mother was particularly proud of her kid, letting their child show off themselves in front of other adults. When the kid came to me, I said to him :"Great!But can you help me get six kernels of melon seeds?" At this moment, the child couldn’t do as what I said. Instead, he solely scratched a great number of melon seeds, and then handed them to me.

This is relevant tothe development of children. In general, children approximately two years old cannot distinguish what is the meaning of numbers. Even if he can count the melon seeds one by one, he also don't know that when he says the number"6", he still don’t get the hang of the concept of " six kernelsof melon seeds .”

Generally speaking thechild has the ability to calculate the fuzzy, that is to say the child has the intuitive judgment for relatively small numbers, being able to know that three seeds is more than one seed. However, they don’t develop the accurate calculation ability. If you put five kernels of melon seeds on one side, and the other side place six kernels of melon seeds, then ask them which side has more than the other. Naturally they become confused, for they don’t really understand the meaning of number.

Children in the age of3 or 4, can slowly understand "number" on behalf of"quantity". While he counts the seeds, from one to six, he knows this is a total number of 6 grain kernels. Only at this time it can be said that he can"count".

Package 2 . Geometrical thinking

Geometry thinking is also an important mathematical ability.

For relatively youngchildren, the use of mathematics is the principle of communication which requires us to play with the children with frequency, use more words describing the shape of the objects, and to guide the children feel various shape andcharacteristics of the items in daily life.

When I read a picture book, I guide my child to the illustrations in the picture book. When my daughter can't speak yet, I'll point to the picture and ask her, "baby,look, the water cube is square, and the bird's nest is oval."."Although her speech is not agile, but I actually have cultivate her interest inthe shape of the things deeply in her heart.

When she grows older,I will encourage her to do graphic associations, such as: "Baby, look,what shape does this ice cream look like? "

Don't assume that children need to be trained when only they are older or go to school. Research shows that, in general, when the child was 2 years and 6 months, can accurately describe the shape of an object name, they can not only understand the specification of equilateral triangle geometry, but also can understand this kind of nonstandard angle triangle shape, and even developed a an abstractgraph understanding ability like" triangle like pizza ". As for the children who reach two years old, most of them cannot tell the shape of most objects.

In addition to language, toys and objects are also good ways to exercise geometric thinking.You can build the blocks or play the jigsaw puzzles with them, leading them to experience conversion between graphs. For example, two triangles can becombined into a square, and the two squares can be combined into a rectangle. To do manual work, we can use the discarded express box, a rectangular carton,plus four round bottle caps to turn into a car.

Package 3 . Measurement thinking

Measuring andcontrasting thinking are also important mathematical thinking. To train thesetwo kinds of thinking there is no need to prepare materials on purpose. For children, it's good to give them enough opportunities to explore things around him.

For relatively small children, focusing on improving the baby's comparative thinking is of great importance. Skillfully use mathematics as the communication principle, we should usually ask our children, "Is this more than that?"""Is that less than this?"" Or"Is this as much as that one?" This kind of question can be used when they are young. When buying fruits at home, we can let our children have a count. For instance, How many apples and oranges are there on the table? Which kind of fruit is less?

As our children grow older,we have to try to introduce the concept of sorting. As our children pick up the toys, we may ask her, "Can you put the toys away in order from the big to the small?"" Then, when our children are in the row, we could ask what they think and why they line up all the toys like that, making our children make an attempt to describe what is in their mind. The concept of sorting is the foundation of children's measurement thinking.

When talking to children, we also pay more attention to the word "size","weight", "length" and so on. For example, ask her/him,"who is the shortest in our family?"" Similarly "who is thetallest" and "who is the heaviest" can be asked.

When the child answers, we must consciously add units of measurement, such as father weighing70 kilograms, and mother 165 cm". In these subtle changes, children realize that numbers are meaningful. They can be used to represent the volume,weight, and quality of matter.

Measuring thinking is more than just height and weight. Many moms and dads know the importance of time management capability. In fact, measuring thinking can also train children'sability to regulate time. Dr Wei said when his daughter was a child, he used toask his daughter the time. For example, when she was playing with toys, he pointed to the clock and said to her, "Ten minutes, it's time fordinner."." To do so, it helps strengthen the child's perception oftime, and secondly, the child has a psychological expectations , and then when time is up, they are more willing to put down toys, and ready to eat.

Our children live in a world of temptations, electronic products, games, video, all of which attract their attention. But mathematics, science, and reading, which seem boring, can stimulate the child's abstract thinking and are important to the child's development.

How do you cultivate your children's interest in math? Parents are the child's first attraction.Many mothers have anxiety because of their childhood's unhappy experiences in math and their connection with negative emotions. A study by the University of Chicago shows that if parents are worried about math, it can infect children and affect their math scores.

If the parents show appreciation to mathematics, combine with the daily life and play with the children do the math, making math "nutritious and delicious", the children are bound to love mathematics like a gourmet.

In the end ,may all of your children fall in love with math.

知识点链接：afterward(s),later

这两个副词均有“后来，以后”之意

afterward(s)与later的不同之处有两点：

1，afterwards指一整段时间之后，一般不分具体时间连用，而later常指一个具体的时间点之后。

2，afterward(s)强调事物的先后顺序，而later侧重“迟、推迟”。