Learn Numbers 1-5

See more activities in: Preschool, Counting & Numbers

Get kids excited about math by counting one of their favorite things — candy!  If you don't want to encourage a sweet tooth, use button, goldfish, or any other object you've got on hand.

While counting might be a difficult concept for young kids at first, repetition is crucial. Number knowledge forms the foundation for everything they'll learn in mathematics for the rest of their lives.

Numeration is discovering and understanding the "manyness" of numbers. To begin your child's number practice, focus on the "manyness" of numbers one through five. It's generally easy to understand the concept of one. Your child has been asking for "one" of something since learning to speak! Two is also a manageable concept for your child to grasp because the idea of two has been a part of her knowledge bank since she discovered that she possessed two hands to hold things and realized that this was more than one. The real complexity begins with the number three, so that's a great place to start!

What You Need:

  • Five pieces of candy

What You Do:

  1. Give your child three pieces of candy. Ask her to describe the candies.
  2. Instruct her to move her candies into several directional and positional relationships (in a pile, behind you, over your head, to one side, etc.).
  3. Have her create a pattern with the candies and then reorder them in a different way.
  4. After she becomes familiar with this set of three candies, count them out loud with her.
  5. Repeat this activity with the numbers four and five at a later time. As you acquaint her to each new number, introduce it as the adding of one more to the number she previously learned about. For example, when you introduce four, say, " We already know what three is. When we add a new number to a set of three, we've created a set of four."
  6. Introduce zero only after numbers one through five. And remember, having "zero candies" is a different concept than simply not having any candy.

Keep practicing counting with any objects you can find! She can count fruit loops, toy cars, dolls, anything she can think of. Changing the counting items is a great way to keep the activity fun and help her get all the practice she needs.