This is exactly what all parents dream about for their children. As children grow up, education gets tough because children get to tap new areas of learning on an advanced level each time. Therefore, to make early school years easy for them, you want to find effective educational solutions. Following are some tips and tricks that you can use to educate your child about numbers.

Tip No. 1: Count Things Around the House
Children remember visually exposed things better. Collect different items that you have in your house, such as color pencils, buttons, hairpins, or even candy. Put them on one side together and count them aloud with your child. Use colorful items that can make counting fun for your child. This is also a great way to enhance your bond with the child.

Tip No. 2: Read Counting Books
This is a great way to familiarize your child with numbers. You can read counting books to them and help them count different things in the book. Children learn faster when you show them visual cues and feel motivated when they see you by tutoring them. All you need to do is to pay a visit to the library to get hold of a book.

Tip No. 3: Get Your Kids Into the Kitchen With You
When you go to cook in the kitchen, take your kid along. Kids love to be in the kitchen (mostly because we tell them to stay away from everything in the kitchen). Ask your child to count the number of eggs, toast slices, and Bologna slices when you cook. They love to experiment and if you involve them. There is nothing like it. Moreover, tutoring and cooking at the same time can be fun and time-saving too!

Tip No. 4: Play Board Games
Children love to play games. Board games like Monopoly are a great way to teach your child about numbers. You can ask your child to count the number of dots on top of the dice each time you or your child rolls it. Your child will learn how to count in no time.

Many people, now awake to the important role of child education in shaping up a person’s feature, are expressing a strong desire in seeing that their kids go through decent ECD programs. Therefore many are known to proceed to the early childhood education centers, and pose questions on how the different childhood education systems work. But the answers given to those questions don’t help them much, because a description of each early childhood program makes it seem alluring. That is especially the case, given the fact that the developers are always keen on putting very reasonable explanations for pretty much each and every aspect of their program.

At the end of the day, we know that some early child education programs are better than others. ECD programs whose graduates go on to become educational achievers can be termed as being amongst the best. ECD programs whose graduates, in addition to becoming educational achievers, also tend to become socially competent and physically active adults would also definitely qualify for a spot amongst the very best childhood education programs. There are therefore two main criteria through which we can judge the quality of an early child education program; criteria via which we can identify the best ECD programs over the rest.

As it turns out, the best ECD programs are those that are structured in a way that creates a genuine love for learning in their students. Kids are by nature curious, and the best ECD programs are created to arouse, rather than dull, that curiosity. Curiosity awakened, the best childhood education programs tend to go on to make the learning process (which is supposed to feed the curiosity) fun. This is as opposed to the archaic ECD programs that are known to make learning a chore for the kids. Now human nature inclines us to do things that are ‘fun’ to us, while disinclining us from doing things that are ‘chore-some’ to us. And attitudes we acquire early in our lives tend to be attitudes we hold and act on all our lives.

The best early child education programs are also those that are structured in such a way that the students who go through them develop a sense of balance throughout their lives. This is as opposed to some archaic childhood education that tended to insist on utmost concentration on academic matters, whilst discouraging social contact and physical activity. That could turn out to be counterproductive, and could breed truancy in the learners (as they tried to act on their natural human tendencies towards social contact and physical activity). It could also give, in the learners who chose to follow the dictates of the system keenly, a problem of lack of balance. That is where we end up with ‘nerds’ who are so focused on their work, intellectual or otherwise, to the detriment of the other aspects of their lives. But the best early child education programs, whilst encouraging keenness in educational pursuit, also strongly encourage balance.

A well-chosen book is beneficial to audial and visual learners. Preschoolers enjoy colorful interactive books. Pop-up books or books like I Spy are always a hit with preschoolers. My students have always liked: Mouse Paints, by Ellen Stoll Welsh and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, by Bill Martin Jr. I always try to pick books that offer cross curriculum activities.

When we share Mouse Paints the students mix cups of colored water in the science learning center. The math center would be entertaining with a color memory match game. In the art center they first paint sections of a folded sheet of paper with the primary colors. Then they mix the paints to create the secondary colors and paint with those colors. The finishing touch the glue on a white cut out of a mouse. For large motor development activities a game of Red Light/Green Light is played at recess.

For those who are tactile learners, touch is important. Preschoolers love play dough. Why not appeal to their senses and let them help make scented play dough. Lets focus on orange.

Scented Play Dough

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tablespoon alum powder, spice section at grocery store

1/2 cup salt

3 tablespoons cooking oil

2 cups boiling water

1 package unsweetened powdered drink mix, (orange is a good choice)

Combine flour, alum, and salt and mix well.

Combine water, oil and Kool-Aid.

Pour water mixture over dry ingredients and stir well.

Once it cools enough, place in Ziplock plastic bags for kneading.

I always try to provide a craft or art project to help my tactile learners, and it’s fun for all.

Making Fruit Prints is good for the color orange.

materials needed: oranges, apples, knife, red and yellow tempera paint trays, white construction paper

Cut fruit in half crossing the cores.

Have your preschoolers dip the apples in the paint and make prints on their paper.

Now have them mix their paint and dip their orange and make a print of it on their paper.