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Preschool Math at Home: Simple Activities to Build the Best Possible Foundation for Your Child
Giving your preschooler a great start in math doesn’t have to be complicated. Learn how to use fun but purposeful games and activities to give your young child the best possible foundation.
Preschool Math at Home will guide you step-by-step as you introduce your preschooler to the world of numbers. Your child will develop a thorough understanding of the numbers up to ten,
countingcomparing and ordering numbersrecognizing written numeralsbeginning addition and subtractionAll of the activities are quick and playful, with lots of movement, manipulatives, and games. Each takes less than five minutes, with no special materials needed other than a few household items. Play each game several times for a full year of preschool math curriculum.
Preschool Math at Home will guide you step-by-step as you introduce your preschooler to the world of numbers. Your child will develop a thorough understanding of the numbers up to ten,
countingcomparing and ordering numbersrecognizing written numeralsbeginning addition and subtractionAll of the activities are quick and playful, with lots of movement, manipulatives, and games. Each takes less than five minutes, with no special materials needed other than a few household items. Play each game several times for a full year of preschool math curriculum.
107 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 15, 2016
35 people are currently reading
96 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 22, 2019
I have loved using this book with my preschooler. It has instilled a very clear number sense in her, which is foundational to mathematics.
January 4, 2017
Kate Snow is my go-to voice when I need help making decisions regarding my children's math education in our homeschool. Her suggestions are inspiring, her knowledge of the subject of early elementary math clear. When my first child finished an earlier publication of Addition Facts That Stick and then came out of it knowing his math facts, I knew I had to try Preschool Math at Home with my preschooler. This book is beautiful, my little loves having her very own math book and it's full of play based lessons to kick start what hopefully becomes a lifetime love for numbers.
August 25, 2023
Having just read the book through and barely started the actual activities with my kids, I'm basing my evaluation on my experience learning and teaching math.
This is everything I wanted in a preschool math curriculum. Not worksheets, not complicated manipulatives. All the real-life math that you probably already do with your kid when it comes up naturally, (counting fingers, counting toys, comparing quantities of snacks) just intentionally sequenced to give your child the best possible start ahead of kindergarten.
I got this from the library but I'll be buying my own copy and recommending it to my friends. I can't wait to try out Math with Confidence (a full curriculum also by Kate Snow) when my oldest starts kindergarten.
This is everything I wanted in a preschool math curriculum. Not worksheets, not complicated manipulatives. All the real-life math that you probably already do with your kid when it comes up naturally, (counting fingers, counting toys, comparing quantities of snacks) just intentionally sequenced to give your child the best possible start ahead of kindergarten.
I got this from the library but I'll be buying my own copy and recommending it to my friends. I can't wait to try out Math with Confidence (a full curriculum also by Kate Snow) when my oldest starts kindergarten.
April 14, 2017
Hands-down, this book is the best resource I've come across to build a preschooler's foundation in mathematics.
Best of all, it's all achieved through play - your little one will have the best time engaging in all of these simple activities with you!
This book is seriously one that I can't stop gushing about in person, so of course that meant I had to tell you all more about it, as well.
The first time I encountered this book, I grew more and more excited about it just reading the preface.
In it, Kate explains the path she and her then-preschool son traveled when looking for a preschool math curriculum.
She observed that he quickly and easily grasped new concepts and she wanted him to learn about numbers and the language of math with as much interest and excitement as he learned about the rest of the world, not from being stuck in a chair filling out worksheets.
Since she couldn't find the high-quality, developmentally-appropriate curriculum she desired and since she also had her own worthy background in math and teaching, she decided to create her own program.
This book is the result of her work and is composed of the simple, straightforward (and fun!) activities that she used with her own kids.
You'll appreciate Kate's notes throughout the book that help you understand the reasoning behind the activities. She explains the skills developed, why they're sequenced in their particular order and how each one will help lay a strong mathematical foundation for your child.
Kate focuses on five key skills in this book:
Counting
Subitizing (this is a huge focus in early-elementary classrooms these days!)
Numeral Recognition
Number Comparisons
Part/Part/Whole Relationships (find a further explanation of this and a fun activity in my Ladybug Girl Addition Bugs post here)
Chapters are broken down to cover numbers 0-5 and 6-10 for the first two skills (Baby steps! No need to rush these concepts!) and an appendix is included with perforated pages so that you can just tear out the resources and put them to use!
Each activity is clearly organized so that you can see its purpose, the materials needed and the directions at a glance. There are also many illustrations which contribute to your understanding of everything - particularly helpful if you're one of the bazillion parents out there who feel uncomfortable with math or one who wants this learning time to be as painless as possible.
Each chapter concludes with an "Is My Child Ready to Move On?" section in which Kate stresses the importance of working through these skills deliberately and "hanging out" at one activity until your child has completely mastered it.
She reviews the most important things you should look for in order to continue on in your journey through this book, so that you can feel confident with your decision to move forward.
You'll want to check this book out when your child begins to show an interest in basic math concepts like counting, most likely around age three or so.
The glossy, bright cover will immediately give you confidence in its worth and although it is chock-full of great activities, its sleek 100 pages mean that you won't feel overwhelmed by it all.
I received a free copy of this product from the author. All opinions are my own.
Best of all, it's all achieved through play - your little one will have the best time engaging in all of these simple activities with you!
This book is seriously one that I can't stop gushing about in person, so of course that meant I had to tell you all more about it, as well.
The first time I encountered this book, I grew more and more excited about it just reading the preface.
In it, Kate explains the path she and her then-preschool son traveled when looking for a preschool math curriculum.
She observed that he quickly and easily grasped new concepts and she wanted him to learn about numbers and the language of math with as much interest and excitement as he learned about the rest of the world, not from being stuck in a chair filling out worksheets.
Since she couldn't find the high-quality, developmentally-appropriate curriculum she desired and since she also had her own worthy background in math and teaching, she decided to create her own program.
This book is the result of her work and is composed of the simple, straightforward (and fun!) activities that she used with her own kids.
You'll appreciate Kate's notes throughout the book that help you understand the reasoning behind the activities. She explains the skills developed, why they're sequenced in their particular order and how each one will help lay a strong mathematical foundation for your child.
Kate focuses on five key skills in this book:
Counting
Subitizing (this is a huge focus in early-elementary classrooms these days!)
Numeral Recognition
Number Comparisons
Part/Part/Whole Relationships (find a further explanation of this and a fun activity in my Ladybug Girl Addition Bugs post here)
Chapters are broken down to cover numbers 0-5 and 6-10 for the first two skills (Baby steps! No need to rush these concepts!) and an appendix is included with perforated pages so that you can just tear out the resources and put them to use!
Each activity is clearly organized so that you can see its purpose, the materials needed and the directions at a glance. There are also many illustrations which contribute to your understanding of everything - particularly helpful if you're one of the bazillion parents out there who feel uncomfortable with math or one who wants this learning time to be as painless as possible.
Each chapter concludes with an "Is My Child Ready to Move On?" section in which Kate stresses the importance of working through these skills deliberately and "hanging out" at one activity until your child has completely mastered it.
She reviews the most important things you should look for in order to continue on in your journey through this book, so that you can feel confident with your decision to move forward.
You'll want to check this book out when your child begins to show an interest in basic math concepts like counting, most likely around age three or so.
The glossy, bright cover will immediately give you confidence in its worth and although it is chock-full of great activities, its sleek 100 pages mean that you won't feel overwhelmed by it all.
I received a free copy of this product from the author. All opinions are my own.
December 11, 2019
Great book for teaching young kids math concepts through play.
5 minute activities with very little prep from me!
5 minute activities with very little prep from me!
January 1, 2017
Some great suggesting for teaching the first basics math skills to your preschooler through play.
July 13, 2022
Pre-reading this for the upcoming school year with my 4 year old twins. They want to “do school” like their older siblings, but I’m not sure if they are ready for kindergarten material yet. I thought we would start with this book to assess where they are at and then go from there.
What I like:
1. all the activities in the book are play & game based.
2. no need to buy a bunch of extra materials.
3. all that is necessary is just 5 minutes a day, a few days a week, playing these games, to teach foundational math concepts.
The games are very simple and use little to no basic materials that can be found around most households. You can use anything to count — marbles, stuffed animals, pencils, legos, fingers on a hand, pieces of cereal, etc.
It begins with counting to 5. The author wants full mastery of counting “one, two, three, four, five” in the correct order, and assurance that the child understands the total number of objects is the last number counted (five.) She recommends rearranging the items in different ways (not just a straight line) so they can grasp that no matter what order or arrangement they are in, the total number doesn’t change. She also focuses on counting intangible things, like sounds and motions (claps and hops).
Once a child has mastered this concept, they move on to:
• counting to ten
• subitizing’(recognizing an amount without counting — like when someone holds up three fingers and you recognize it is three without individually counting them)
• recognizing written numerals
• comparing quantities (more, few, the same)
• the last chapter introduces addition and subtraction by joining and taking away items from groups (adding fish to the pond, taking pennies away, etc.)
In the appendix are a few game pieces which she recommends photocopying onto cardstock.
The only reason that I didn’t give this a full 5 stars is that it’s almost too simple. It’s really just a book full of the most simple, basic games: line up some toys and count them, hop a certain amount of times and count the hops, compare two sets of items and determine which has more and less, etc.
I really think the twins have most of these concepts mastered and that we will move through this book rather quickly. For me, playing the games with the twins will be most helpful in determining exactly what they do and do not know before starting a Kindergarten curriculum.
What I like:
1. all the activities in the book are play & game based.
2. no need to buy a bunch of extra materials.
3. all that is necessary is just 5 minutes a day, a few days a week, playing these games, to teach foundational math concepts.
The games are very simple and use little to no basic materials that can be found around most households. You can use anything to count — marbles, stuffed animals, pencils, legos, fingers on a hand, pieces of cereal, etc.
It begins with counting to 5. The author wants full mastery of counting “one, two, three, four, five” in the correct order, and assurance that the child understands the total number of objects is the last number counted (five.) She recommends rearranging the items in different ways (not just a straight line) so they can grasp that no matter what order or arrangement they are in, the total number doesn’t change. She also focuses on counting intangible things, like sounds and motions (claps and hops).
Once a child has mastered this concept, they move on to:
• counting to ten
• subitizing’(recognizing an amount without counting — like when someone holds up three fingers and you recognize it is three without individually counting them)
• recognizing written numerals
• comparing quantities (more, few, the same)
• the last chapter introduces addition and subtraction by joining and taking away items from groups (adding fish to the pond, taking pennies away, etc.)
In the appendix are a few game pieces which she recommends photocopying onto cardstock.
The only reason that I didn’t give this a full 5 stars is that it’s almost too simple. It’s really just a book full of the most simple, basic games: line up some toys and count them, hop a certain amount of times and count the hops, compare two sets of items and determine which has more and less, etc.
I really think the twins have most of these concepts mastered and that we will move through this book rather quickly. For me, playing the games with the twins will be most helpful in determining exactly what they do and do not know before starting a Kindergarten curriculum.
February 15, 2023
Simple, practical approach to teaching children math concepts with easy to execute ideas. Rating low just because I think that some of these ideas are so simple that they are a bit intuitive and would probably put resources towards reading something that gets kids to the next level (the book starts with identifying numbers 0-10 and ends with understanding more/less/equal and the "idea of addition/subtraction")
January 3, 2023
We haven’t finished this book yet but I just wanted to throw this review out there to share how much we’ve enjoyed using it so far. We are about halfway through. The activities are very clever and very focused on math skills at a level I wouldn’t have thought about on my own. The lessons build off of each other really nicely and Clive finds them engaging and fun. 100% recommend.
June 21, 2022
This book was written by a former math teacher-turned stay-at-home-mom who used all the activities from her book with her preschool child. They are all play-based (rather than using any worksheets) and include manipulative (toys, snacks, other small objects) commonly found in your home, so they're free and incredibly simple to implement. Snow organizes the book in a step-wise approach, with the first chapter focusing on helping your preschooler count to five using a variety of games, like counting five cards in a a line, then mixing them up into a scattered group and re-counting them, using fingers to count, and introducing the concept of zero. The next chapter focuses on counting to ten. Each chapter builds on the previous chapter, so in later chapters, children work through recognizing the numerals and matching them with the correct amount of manipulative, understanding the concept or more and less, and subitizing (recognizing small quantities without needing to count them each time, like recognizing that your hand will always have five fingers or being able to recognize two toys in a pile without needing to physically count them). Each activity/game can take as little as five minutes, takes even less time to set up, and is easy to start and stop depending on child's interest or abilities. I have gone through about half of the book with my 2 year old and he loves all the activities we've done and now counts everything. It's a whole new world to him knowing he can count things; it's been very fun to see him excited when he counts to ten. I think most of the activities are geared more towards 3-4 year olds, so I never forced anything and had very low expectations, but his interest propelled us to keep going through the book.
Content rating: G
Content rating: G
February 19, 2024
I love how these lessons teach a deep number sense in such a playful way. Excellent book!! As a first grade teacher I've been searching for an easy to use resource like with with my preschooler, and this is perfect.
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September 6, 2021Pretty basic but a nice one stop shop for ideas.
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February 24, 2024Skimmed this and love it!
January 13, 2026
This made learning the most basic mathematics fun! I will be using this again with my younger daughter. My oldest now loves playing the math games with me!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews