Math is Easy for Young Children

Mathematics is Easy for Young Children
(By: Catur SetioWargo)

Math learning happens naturally as children play. Young children discover, test, and apply math concepts naturally every day, in just about everything they do. Some kinds of math learning seem obvious, such as when we count with child to see how many blocks are in her tower, or when the child, in answer to a question about how old he is, holds up five fingers. But children are also “doing math” as they discuss whose cup is biggest or which bucket holds the most sand. They are developing problem-solving skills by working through playtime dilemmas, such as deciding which size block will make the best roof for a building.

The role in fostering math learning is to build on children’s natural curiosity about shapes, sizes, amounts, and other fundamentals of math. This article will offer plently to help in integrating experiences with math into children’s every-day play. But remember that we are the one who will make it work. Our excitement and interest in children’s inquiries will encourage them to talk through their discoveries. Our acceptance of their math reasoning, even when it may seem “wrong” or illogical, will give them the confidence to keep thinking, questioning, and sharing.

As children touch, pour, shape, and order materials oround them, they discover relationships among objects. The child has a new way of identifying the cars as the “fast red car” and the “faster yellow car”. They can easy to classification the circle shape or square with collecting the materials. Following the pattern: crayon, book, pencil, and continu the next. Sometime the children interesting to measuring the materials with simple way, like fingering, step their feet, or others. Each new discovery about the physical world, and the thinking that accompanies these discoveries, lays the foundation for later mathematical learning. When the child reaches elementary school, their preschool experiences will prepare them for learning to calculate differences in distance and speed, give them a concrete under-standing of how to measure volume, counting the materials, or the other skills.

Learning to be a math thinker also involves using math to solve problems, and the everyday life of preschool offers and endless array. Determining how many sandwich to make for the picnic lunch or how many buckets of sand are needed to fill the sandbox are real challenges – problems children can solve together or on their own.