Teaching the children math in their early ages has spectacular benefits in their later life. But, it has been seen that people put emphasis on teaching children language rather than math. No doubt that language is also significant because it is the medium of communication which is essential for a human being to live in the society. But, math is equally important, because everyday we do a lot of things which is based on math, like shopping and doing money transactions, counting a lot of things, for example, children’s notebooks before keeping them back in their school bags. The advantages of early math education to the children are far reaching through and cannot be ignored at all.
Natural Curiousness
By nature all children are curious to know and learn about the things. They do have interest in almost everything they see around them, by using this trait parents and teachers should make wide strides in getting mastery on number concepts to the children at a very young age.
Indicator of Future Success
It has been found in various studies conducted by the Society of Research in Child Development that a child’s knowledge of number concepts in their school going age is a good indicator of their future success. So, all parents and teachers must work hard to impart math education to the children in their early ages.
Build Confidence
At a young age understanding of numbers, shapes, colors, patterns and counting builds confidence in the children. As the knowledge of language helps child know his surroundings, similarly, the knowledge of how to manage the items in their world builds a sense of ownership with their surroundings within them. An important building block for the children is deciphering the language of math and relating it to themselves.
Capability
Children do have much more capability of learning the math concepts than they are usually assumed. The opportunity given to the children to learn math skills at a young age creates essential connections in their spatial awareness. As everyone knows that everything in math is both concrete and abstract, so learning and understanding these concepts takes time to develop and mature not only in children but in all age groups. Early knowledge of children about the math allows their minds to process the skills required to proceed in their later life.
Easy Incorporation
Fortunately introducing math to the children at a young age is not that difficult as we generally use to think. Asking them to hand each person at the table one napkin or putting two shoes in the shoe rack properly easily introduces the concept or counting or one to one correspondence. The knowledge of counting is the first level and learning to relate the numbers to concrete items is another stage in their math skill development. Simple home exercises can help them enhance their skills in math. For example, when you open refrigerator you can ask your child count and tell me how many bottles are there in this refrigerator, or how many dogs our neighbor have, etc.
You can also keep continue this activity of counting during their playtime; for example you can ask how many crayons they have in their color pack or how many blocks are in their tower etc.
Helps in Language Development
Math is not only the subject in its own but it is related with the language and other sciences as well. So, the activities done to develop math skills in the children, also promotes language and literacy skills in them. For example if you give them 10 words of English language to learn it means that they also learn counting up till the number 10. These skills are quite essential when they begin to learn math or any other subject. The knowledge of numbers; shapes like square, rectangle, triangle; “more than” and “less than” provides them with a new way of narrating stories and understanding them told by anyone else.Progress
Learning at an early age, can minimize the failure rate due to gaps in knowledge progressively. These gaps are those which make a number of children give up mathematics as their subjects in later years.
Matching and comparing are important concepts in mathematics, for example, analyzing equal and not equal. You can ask children to match their pair of socks, gloves, toys, or coins. There are lots of preschool versions out that might be more fun that the traditional set.
Classifying and Sorting
While when the children are matching their concentration is only on what is alike, whereas sorting focuses on what is different. You can ask them to sort their dolls according to size, or to put their toy cars in groups according to color or type of vehicle. Developing these basic skills by playing help children progress much faster in both math and languages.
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