Fun activities to promote maths skills

Simple addition and subtraction, counting to 100, understanding shapes. You can help your preschooler master these early maths skills simply by playing games in and around the house.

Children learn in different ways, so here are some ideas to encourage your preschooler's understanding, depending on his style.

For the visual learner

Play pattern games

For example, give your child green and purple grapes. Ask him to arrange them in different patterns, like "purple, green, purple, green" or "green, green, purple, green, green".

Look out for patterns in nature too, such as rings on a caterpillar and things that come in pairs, like eyes and ears. This will develop his abstract thinking.

Understanding weight

Ask your preschooler to choose an object to weigh on your kitchen scales or any other scale. Now find other objects and ask him to guess whether they will weigh more or less. Then weigh them to find out if he's right.

For the physical learner

Play dice or card games. Roll a pair of dice and ask your child which number is greater than the other - he'll soon recognize the dot groupings by sight. You can also play War with a deck of cards. The higher card number wins. These are both great ways to introduce the concept of "greater than" and "lesser than".

Open your own shop. Price up some tins of any used product and boxes of cereal and place them on a low table. Give your preschooler some money and let him go round the "shop" picking up any of the items that take his fancy. He can then bring them to you, the shopkeeper, at the "counter" and pay however much the goods are worth. You can swap roles later. This activity promotes good money skills.

Measure your family. Use a tape measure to record the heights of everyone in your family. Add up the centimetres to see how "tall" you are all together.

Play board games that use counting and paper money. Snakes and Ladders and Monopoly Junior are great for this.

For the auditory learner

Listen to counting rhymes and songs. "10 green bottles hanging on the wall. 10 green bottles hanging on the wall. If one green bottle should accidentally fall, there'll be nine green bottles hanging on the wall". Any variation on this counting rhyme introduces basic subtraction.

Play a guessing game. This is a good one for a car journey. Your child thinks of a number between one and 10. Try to guess the number by asking questions like: "Is it between three and six?" and "Is it greater than seven?" Then switch roles and let your preschooler do the guessing.