Lets Count in Idalia Centre
This Week at My Little Feet ‘Let’s Count!’
Lets Count in Idalia Centre
This Week at My Little Feet ‘Let’s Count!’
This Week at My Little Feet ‘Let’s Count!’
Lets Count in Idalia Centre

This week at My Little Feet we had Kerry Becker with Renee Smith present the ‘Lets Count’ program. At MLF we aim to create a community of learners and do this by supporting both children and parents alike. This program aims to show how numeracy is used in the home and how, as educators, those at MLF can support parents and children.

We aim to create a mathematically rich environment to encourage children’s learning and do this by incorporating the home environment and parent involvement. There are many different ways to help your child learn about numeracy: play based learning, real life situations and meaningful play  and it is our goal to let the children work it out! The best way to nurture mathematical development is to encourage the interest they have in doing things themselves.

So, we sent home surveys, to you the parents, asking

“How do you support your child’s mathematical development?”

And here are some of the responses we received! 

    Gardening             Reading               Shopping    Eating

Bathtime fun                 Fishing              Out Walking               Counting fingers

        Playing Board Games              Singing songs          Getting ready for the day

By creating a mathematically rich environment for our children we create greater continuity between the home and the learning setting. According to research conducted through this program, supporting the parents who are unsure or have a negative attitude towards mathematics is critical in the development of their children’s mathematical learning.

How can these we use these everyday tasks to support the children’s learning? Here are a few examples…

Gardening: we can talk about the amount of seeds or flowers or we can measure how tall our plants are, all these are ways to use simple mathematics everyday!

Cooking: we measure our ingredients and explore ‘shapes’ as we roll the dough

Packing away our toys (everyones favourite game!): we can use position words i.e. over, under, beside, on top of…. or we can count the amount of objects we pick up (a win for you and your child!)

By creating a mathematically rich environment we can support our child’s learning. We sent home packs with tips, games and books parents can use with their children.

Through the ‘Let’s Count’ program children will have the opportunity to explore mathematics and numeracy concepts in the home on a more frequent and sustained basis which will strengthen their positive dispositions and mathematical learning.