Mathematical Games for Toddlers

A Toddler between two and three years old is the stage where he is beginning to talk in sentences and start on to ask a lot of questions. It is the period where his cognitive skills such as memory, language, perception, concepts, thinking, problem solving, awareness and knowledge begins to build up.

In my parenting experience, both of my sons at age two love picture books with familiar things and simple stories. I bought pop-up books, read them aloud to them and talk about the pictures. They really want to look at the books over and over. 

pop up book, photo from the web

As the eye-hand movements are better coordinated in this age, I begun to teach them how to count and recognize different colors and shapes. I also taught them the basics of counting.

photo credits: ehow.com

Here, I will share you some mathematical games that your kid will surely enjoy. Start with large items at first, such as cookies in a jar, pencils in plastic container or toy cars in a basket.

As children love to guess, prepare the cookie jar filled with several cookies and ask them to estimate how many cookies are there inside the jar. Take out the cookies from the jar one by one by slowly counting on a plate. Five cookies to begin with is ideal. Let him do the counting while he put back the cookies in the jar and vice versa. Let him eat one cookie to let get him rested then start over again by simply asking him how many cookies are left when he just ate one. There you go addition and subtraction for lesson 1. 

Preparing his favorite cereal is another option. Ask him to place a correct number of cereals inside his bowl.  Repeat the process two or three times, then at the end of the game, give him some milk and a spoon to enjoy his cereal with.

Sorting colors - fill in a bowl of fruit loops cereal of different colors. Ask your child to separate the red to the yellow, orange and blue ones on a plate.  Let him count how many cereals are there in each color group.

The puzzle game is entertaining and at the same time challenging. Start out with large four-piece puzzles to begin with, gradually moving on to smaller six and nine-piece puzzles and so on.

Colored building blocks with numbers written on it for mastery and color recognition as well can make him memorize and recognize numbers and colors.

Toddlers are fascinated and engrossed in figuring out situations, they attend to self-selected activities for longer periods of time discovering things and playing.

Familiarization is the key to keep them learning; by nature in this stage they express more curiosity about the world. Yet we have to bear in mind that in this age group temper tantrums are common for they are still unable to control and manage their feelings especially when they get tired or frustrated. Remember children at age two to three are still babies.