Preparing for School – Number Run

Over the last few weeks we have been helping you prepare your child for school come the autumn through play as part of the Get ready for K through play series that we are co-hosting for the second year. This weeks theme is Maths and we’ve got a quick and easy fun game to work on number recognition as well as any other concepts that you may wish to work on with your preschooler before they start school.

Although a lot of time in the first year of school will be spent on number work as well as other maths concepts it’s a great idea to get the kids on track academically by practising number recognition – I used this with my two children one whose in preschool and the other about to go into year 1 and with the same set up we were able to work on number recognition with the preschooler and with my kindergarten aged child I introduced the concept of number bounds for 10.

With our number mat which has number 1 – 10 I quickly placed them around our garden randomly (well reasonably randomly trying to make sure that no two numbers were in order).

We started running to random numbers and shouting out what number it was, then progressed to me shouting a number and them running to it.

With a little more time we worked up the numbers in order from 1 – 10 , and then down the number line from 10 – 1.

Whilst T was running around in order we went over number bounds quickly and then I would shout out a number from 1 – 9 and he would go and find the number bound that would make ten and then from there run to the number 10.

Games like this that work well for both my children at the same time and help them prepare for school and for progressing into the next year at school work really well.

After high-energy activities like this, a calm moment can help preschoolers reset. Try adding a morning basket to your daily rhythm for quiet learning and connection.