Stay Home, Stay Curious
As you and your family stay safe at home, how can you keep your child engaged in learning through this period of school closure? Our numeracy activities for kids will help your resolve this potential issue.
We’ve prepared two short maths activities for you to do together – all you’ll need is some basic materials from around the house!
These numeracy activities for kids can be carried out over 2-3 days, and even repeated in subsequent weeks to help reinforce your child’s understanding of the mathematical concepts covered.
Fun Numeracy Activities for Kids Aged 4-5
There are several objectives your child can achieve with each activity. Depending on your child’s current proficiency with numbers, you can choose or tweak the ones you’d like to focus on with him/her.
1. Identifying number concepts 1-10
2. Using ordinal numbers to describe the position of things in a sequence (e.g. 1st, 2nd and 3rd)
3. Recognising and sequencing numbers from 1-10
4. Matching objects with 1-1 correspondence
Activity 1: Ordinal Numbers
This activity is designed to help your child recognise and sequence ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.). You can also take some time to share about how ordinal numbers are used in real life, for example during competitions or in tracking a priority list!
What You Need to Get Started
- 5 milk cartons
- Assorted craft materials
- Coloured markers
- Ice cream sticks (or any 5 small toys your child would like to use)
Guide and Instructions
1. Using the assorted craft materials you have, get your child to decorate the 5 recycled milk cartons to create miniature houses.
Crafting tip: You may need to assist your child in cutting out a square in the front of each carton to make doors for the houses! Take this chance to remind your child how to safely handle sharp items like a pair of scissors.
2. Guide your child in lining the houses up in a row and labelling them from “1st” to “5th” using the coloured markers.
3. Have your child set aside 5 ice cream sticks to be used as puppets. Your child can also take some time to decorate the sticks with eyes or by writing names for each puppet!
(If you do not have ice cream sticks at home, let your child pick out any 5 toys small enough to fit into the milk carton houses.)
4. Engage your child by creating a story about ordinal numbers and weaving in the different character names for each of the puppets.
Use this as a guide: “One day, ______ (insert chosen name) went to the 1st house to look for ________ (insert another chosen name).”
Prompting questions: Use any of these questions to help your child explore the topic of ordinal numbers!
- What comes after 1st?
- Can you read and point out the 1st to 5th houses with me?
5. As you’re telling the story, ask your child to follow along by placing the puppets into the respective houses.
Activity 2: Indoor “Hopscotch”
Your child may be feeling restless at having to spend majority of his/her time at home during this period.
Why not make your own reusable hopscotch set that can also be used to reinforce the concept of number identification?
The great thing about numeracy activities for kids such as this is that you can keep or move it at any time to another area of your house!
What You Need to Get Started
- A4 or A5 sheets of paper
- Coloured markers or colour pencils
- Blue tack or adhesive tape
Guide and Instructions
1. Let your child design his/her own number cards using the sheets of paper and coloured markers. You will need a total of 10 number cards numbered 1 to 10. You can also allow your young one to explore his/her creativity by decorating the number cards with any extra craft materials you have on hand!
Prompting tip: As your child creates the number cards, lead him/her in reinforcing the concept of number recognition and sequencing by using these questions:
- What comes after 5?
- What comes before 9?
- How many cards are we making in total?
- Can you place the number cards in the right sequence?
2. Place the number cards on the floor in an open space in your house.
While doing this, you can plan a route and adjust the difficulty level according to your child’s number sequencing abilities.
For example, you can place the number cards in sequence (from 1 to 10) or you can mix up the order if your child is able to accurately sequence the numbers on his/her own!
3. Get your child to help you secure the number cards to the floor with adhesive tape or blue tack.
4. Guide your child in playing “hopscotch” with these number cards!
You can change things up by rearranging the number cards after every game for a different sequence variation. With the jumbled-up sequence, you can call out the numbers from 1 to 10 and have your child find the correct number instead.
Follow us for more tips, learning resources and activity suggestions to keep your child engaged at home!