Math (12 - 33 months)
Watching a toddler at play can be like watching a budding mathematician in action. A toddler uses math ideas and concepts while at play in many different ways. She won’t know she is working on her math skills, but you can support her learning as she:
- Lines up toys in a row
- Organizes “baby” animals next to their “daddies”
- Figures out how many things she can carry at once
- Experiments with getting things into and out of tight spaces
- Gets a stool to reach the sink
- Realizes that her new coat is like your “big” one
- Helps you give each toddler two crackers
Toddlers are naturally curious about their world. This curiosity helps a toddler build a foundation for math skills and concepts.
- Emptying and filling activities give her a sense of quantity as she figures out how much water or sand it will take to fill a container.
- Cooking and making things like play dough help her learn about measuring, comparing, and counting.
- Pegboards, interlocking blocks, and nesting cups challenge her to fill the holes and complete patterns.
- Counting songs help her learn number patterns, such as counting forward and backward and counting by twos or tens.
- Helping distribute snacks or set a snack table gives her opportunities to count one item at a time, create equal sets, and figure out how many more.
Toddlerhood is a great time to build math vocabulary. As you support exploration and go through daily routines, introduce and encourage toddlers to use math words. Introduce words such as above, before, enough, first, and too heavy as they put their observations and reasoning into words.