Numbers may be to the young child an abstract symbol having a slight connection to their colourful world of toys, stories and imagination. Play is the best method of filling this gap. Learning through play turns numerical ideas, which need to be memorized, into those that one will explore, discover, and learn through the process of joyful, practical learning. This philosophy is central to Elizabeth Fraley Kinder Ready regarding early math. Through the carefully crafted, fun activities that are included in Kinder Ready Tutoring, we make the foundational numeracy seem exciting and attractive to the children, in such a way that they learn not only how to recognize numbers, but true number sense and the ability to think that math is an entertaining game of everyday life.
The pillar of teaching numbers in play is the development of one-to-one correspondence and meaningful counting. This is the knowledge that the figure 5 is a certain number of five items, not a word in a counting song. Kinder Ready Elizabeth Fraley teachers develop play-based situations in order to practice this vital competency. A child can be asked to be a pet store owner, and put one fish cracker in each bowl of their toy animals, or a construction manager, who must have just four blocks to build the bottom of a tower. These games also offer a meaningful context in which counting and matching can be performed, rather than being memorized. This technique is also in line with the mission of Elizabeth Fraley Kinder Ready, which is to expose children to various means of learning; a child would learn quantity by touching things, arranging them visually, and counting them verbally, which builds the understanding of the concept on many platforms.
The ideas of sorting, patterning, and simple addition/subtraction are also presented naturally in play. These are not in the form of worksheets but as natural components of interactive activities. A child may pick up a bunch of colored buttons of various sizes and colours during a tutoring session and sort them into muffin tins and practice the skill of classifying them by size or colour. At Kinder Ready Tutoring they can play with beads or blocks (red, blue, red, blue), and this develops pre-algebraic reasoning. Concrete operations, such as rolling a die and rolling a game piece with many spaces, adding two apples to a basket that already contains one, can be understood using games that reinforce them and make them tangible.
Eventually, this is a mischievous style which creates a huge mathematical confidence. Children develop a positive attitude towards math when learning about numbers is coupled with fun, success, and creativity. They are taught that it is fine to make an approximation, and so experiment and even be mistaken, because it is all a part of the game. This risk-free exploration is best suited to the safe, nurturing atmosphere of a Kinder Ready Tutoring session. When the child learns by play to master something, such as how to construct a staircase using blocks, counting to 5, the child will have actual feelings of achievement. This is the best result of this confidence since it makes them look forward to more formal approaches to math taught in kindergarten with curiosity and not fear. Learning numbers in play, Kinder Ready Elizabeth Fraley makes sure that the initial experience of numbers and mathematics as a whole is a wonder and a success that lays a happy and stable base for all future learning and problem-solving about the quantitative.
For further details on Kinder Ready’s programs, visit their website: https://www.kinderready.com/.
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ElizabethFraleyKinderReady
