When to give your child math initiation?
Is it one, two or three? Do you want to teach your child to recognize or teach your child to count?
The correct answer is to start with a child half a year old. Many parents will find it unbelievable, half a year old, can the child really understand?
Half a year is not an unfounded event, but has been learned by psychologists through experiments.
01. True mathematical enlightenment is not what we think
In the 1990s, Yale psychology professor Karen Wien conducted such an experiment to explore how much Hazi knew about the so-called basis of addition and subtraction.
Professor Wayne showed the 5-month-old baby a mini stage with a Mickey Mouse doll. When the child looks at it for a long time, the interest in the doll begins to decrease.
At this time, someone will raise a screen from the bottom of the stage to block the Mickey Mouse doll, and then there will be an arm to take a new Mickey Mouse doll and put it behind the screen.
There are two Mickey Mouse dolls behind the screen, and everyone wonders if babies will be able to realize this.
When the screen is lowered, there is a Mickey Mouse doll behind the screen, a situation known as the "impossible condition". Instead, when the screen is lowered to reveal two Mickey Mouse dolls, a situation known as the "expected condition."
The researchers found that babies stared at Mickey Mouse longer under impossible conditions and showed surprise. The researchers deduced from this that the baby was a "wig" that understood.
The researchers then reversed the study, placing two dolls first and then taking one, and the baby once again had a surprised expression under the "impossible condition", which shows that the baby also has a basic understanding of subtraction.
This experiment does not mean that babies really know how to add and subtract, but that half-year-olds already have a sensitivity to mathematics.
It also proves that the sensitivity of children to logarithms all over the world begins in infancy, regardless of the parenting style of parents.
Parents must not because of the child's sensitivity to numbers began to force the child to recognize the number, you know, the child's basic comprehension ability is developed in accordance with the established process and order, parents to do is to have a more interested understanding of the development of the child's mathematical ability.
02. The development of children's mathematical abilities
Numbers and quantities
The first mathematical ability in a child's life, sensitivity to quantity.
The researchers placed 2 medium-sized blocks in front of the 7-month-old baby, moving back and forth in a certain path, and the baby would stare at the block for a long time at first, and then the attention began to decrease. When attention was reduced to a certain level, the staff members baby looked at the other two sets of squares.
2 larger blocks with the same number and different quantities; 3 blocks of the same size, with different numbers and the same amount. As a result, the baby's gaze remains on the 2 larger squares. This proves that in terms of number and quantity, babies are often concerned with quantity.
Applied to daily life, babies have learned the concepts of "more" and "less".
Tips: What parents have to do is not to show their children digital cards, but to give their children more than the size and see different numbers of items.
count
From about the age of 2 and a half, the child will begin to say a string of numbers such as "1, 2, 3, 4", but at this time, the child does not fully understand the order of the logarithms, and often hears 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, such upside-down numbers.
At the age of 3, the child begins to be able to count a specific set of objects, and can also distinguish 4 cookies more than 3 pieces, less than 5 pieces.
When the child reaches the age of 4, give the child 3 sugars, the child will count to 123, give the child 2 sugars, and the child will start 12345 again. It is not until the child is 5 years old that he will have the ability to continue counting.
Tips: What parents need to do is to let their children count the actual items and practice their children's ability to count.
Acquisition of the counting principle
How exactly do children begin to understand numbers? Researchers have found that there are 5 principles in the process of children learning about numbers.
One-to-one correspondence principle
Assigning a number to an object can be done by a two-and-a-half-year-old child, and although they may not understand the order of numbers, the child will not assign it wrong.
This is the basic principle of children counting, only if they can do one-to-one correspondence, can they avoid counting incorrectly because of repetition when counting.
Tips: Children's mathematical initiation may wish to start with children from one-to-one correspondence, if children can't do it, they may wish to start practicing in a few months.
Fixed order principle
Whether or not children are able to read out the numbers in the correct order, they themselves have a familiar and fixed order.
For example, if the child's number order is 12346, let the child continue to count another thing, the child can still count with 12346, rather than every time it is different.
Cardinality principle
Once the child has mastered the fixed order, the child is ready to master the cardinal principle, that is, the last number of the cardinality represents the total number of things in this group.
Abstract principles
When the child masters the above skills, the child's counting ability will expand to all aspects of life, counting clothes, counting flowers, counting phones, and so on.
The order-independent principle
Give the child 6 cookies, let the child count from different cookies, and the child who understands the principle of order agnosticity will find that no matter whether it is from any cake to start counting, the final result is 6, the answer will not change, this is the order independence principle.
Tips: What parents have to do is to prepare several sets of items for their children, and they can check whether the child has used the counting principle by counting to see if the child will count on anything, such as calling the family several times a week. You can ask your child to count the different items and find out if the child has mastered the principle of order indifference.
Learn about the number axis
For 3-year-olds, one number is much larger or much smaller than the other, and it's easy to tell the difference between the two, but once two numbers are close, such as 5 and 4, 5 and 6, it's hard for children to tell the difference. Because the child is the first to use the amount to distinguish, if it is 5 oranges and 4 oranges, the child can distinguish, but if it is the numbers 4 and 5, the child needs to understand the concept of the number axis.
Children need to fully master this ability until after the age of 5.
Tips: The initiation of mathematics should not teach children numbers as soon as they come up, such as the big hour, it is best to use specific things to let children establish concepts.
Count and ratio size
If you want your child to really master addition and subtraction, this needs to be done after the child really understands the principle of counting and the knowledge of the number axis.
Only after understanding the concept of the number axis can the child add two items together. For example, 3 plus 4 equals 7, and only then can the child vaguely feel that addition and subtraction is carried out on the same continuum, the number axis.
Tips: When parents design games, they can set the board game to a number axis, such as a few steps forward and a few steps back. Parents can ask their children, who is the lead? A few steps ahead? How many steps are you still up to catch up? And so on, incorporate the concept of the number axis into the game.
03. How can parents help their children?
Sensitivity to numbers is the innate ability of children, and what parents have to do is not to promote seedlings, but to grasp the innate ability of children and properly push their children forward. Remember, don't pull up seedlings to help, let children who have not mastered the principle of counting recognize numbers, remember numbers, and there is no benefit.
Play more blocks and watch fewer videos. The best way to recognize numbers is to count, fiddle with objects, and it's best to have your child watch less videos.
Integrate teaching into your life. Numbers can be found everywhere in life. To distribute food to the dolls and set chopsticks for the family, parents need a pair of wise eyes to observe and discover.
Early education is in play. As long as parents understand the development process of their children's digital abilities, they will find that learning while playing can be easily taught much more useful.