Fact sheet: Numeracy skills: 5 - 8 years
From the Centre for Community Child Health
Numeracy skills are important skills for your child- they will use them in many situations throughout their lives. It can be easy to think that once your child is at school all their numeracy learning happens there. But a home environment that's rich in 'mathematical thinking' helps create a foundation for the skills your child is developing.
Mathematical thinking
There are lots of diverse opportunities for mathematical thinking and developing numeracy skills every day.
- To support the development of your child's numeracy skills, stretch your child's mathematical thinking ability by asking 'Does that make sense?', 'Is the answer reasonable?' or What other ways could we do this?'.
- Play numbers games using magazines to create a 'hunt' where your child needs to find particular numbers on the pages.
- Organise, categorise and count collections of things like books, clothing and shoes.
- Estimate, measure and compare lengths and heights, how heavy or light things are and how much containers hold.
- Prepare food together. Your child can measure out the quantities and work out the temperature needed for cooking the food.