Numerical Concepts Through Games

Numerical concepts are applied to all areas of life. For children they can directly see the application in shopping, cooking, playing and studying. Keeping the children in a sustained motivation is the most challenging task. Teaching mathematical concepts through innovative methods are explained below. 

Jumping

Jumping is the best form of exercise for children, there are many benefits when you ask them to jump often. Firstly it drastically improves the mood and secondly it’s a fun play method. Ask your child to say the numbers and jump. The jump can be modified as a frog, rabbit or high jump to make it more interesting.

Number Patterns

Combining some art and craft along with this activity will spark the creativity side of the child. Several activities are available that clubs fine motor skills, creativity and numerical concepts. Ask the child to draw patterns like circle, square, triangle, rectangle for each number written on the sheet. Then ask her to apply some glue and sprinkle kesari powder, sand, rice, wheat or pulses. Similarly you can ask them to cut simple shapes like squares, rectangles or triangles in colour papers and ask them to paste it.

Market

Children can play the market game by taking a few potatoes, tomatoes, apples, lemon and oranges in a basket, they can count the number of vegetables and fruits and keep the same number of flash cards aside. 

Household objects

Counting the windows, doors, chairs, pans, glasses and other household items. Modify it by counting chair or table legs.

Sandpaper tracing

Sandpaper tracing is a wonderful pre-writing concept which enables the child to visualize and remember the strokes to write the numbers. The child should use the pointer finger by saying the strokes to trace the numbers.

Wooden Carving Board

It consists of 0 to 9 numerals carved in a single wooden board and a stick pencil provided to carve the numbers as it makes it easy to write in a grid note.

Garden

Take your child to your garden. You can assign the task of counting the    number of trees, number of leaves in a stem or number of flowers in a plant.

Although our traditional approaches have worked for many years and have been put through the test of time successfully, it is imperative we keep innovating new methods to keep the learning fun. Several digital apps are available, which can also be explored for this purpose.

Lakshmi Sakthi Alagappan lives in Thanjavur in Tamilnadu, India. She is an  administrative officer at Blossom Public School. She likes reading books, listening to music and surfing.

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