Learning Mathematics Can Be Fun

“One, two, three, four, five
Once I caught a fish alive”
The awareness of math is already created in the mind of a toddler when he/she is reciting nursery rhymes centered on numbers.

Children have an amazing ability to know the difference between big and small, few and many and same and different at a very early age. Their tender minds are ever receptive to knowledge and they can be easily conditioned to imbibe the fundamentals of mathematics such as addition and subtraction. This process must be carried out in a playful manner. It is of utmost importance that from the very beginning, children be initiated into learning math in a care-free fun-filled environment. Real-life situations must be used to make the learning experience more fascinating. This will lead to an enhancement of the child’s enthusiasm for working with numbers. A genuine interest in math can be instilled in a child by encouraging conversations that lead to logical thinking and reasoning — for it is these that form the very basis of mathematics.

The study of mathematics involves logical reasoning, estimation, classification and identification. All of these can be reinforced into a child’s mind using day-to-day activities as examples. Besides the traditional abacus with colourful beads, many other tools can be used to introduce numbers to toddlers. Virtually any place — be it the home, an airport, a railway station, a swimming pool, a children’s park and myriad others can serve as an ideal place for working with numbers. Once a child has discovered the magic of numbers, he/she will be fully prepared to enter the real world of mathematics, however challenging and arduous the task may seem.

The concept of ascending and descending order of numbers can be taught by citing the example of a staircase or an elevator. Simple experiments with parameters such as distance, length, volume and mass can be performed at home. Distance measurements can be easily made within the house using the measure tape or by counting the number of footsteps. The size of a room can be estimated by counting the number of floor tiles. A wooden or plastic scale can be used to measure the length of pencils, books or desks. Plastic bottles of varying sizes filled with water will help a child to correlate size with volume.

Children must be encouraged to experiment with small, colorful, plastic building blocks. Dimensions of household articles such as furniture and appliances like the refrigerator, television and others can be measured in order to introduce them to the concept of three dimensions. A weighing scale model can be easily made at home and children could experiment with a number of household toys and objects to discover the concept of mass. Once children can recognize numerals and are comfortable in writing them, they may be given the responsibility of maintaining their own growth chart. By entering their height and weight measurements after every birthday, they may also be able to appreciate the importance of a balanced diet in maintaining good health.

Preschoolers may enjoy playing with beads and marbles. Sorting them on the basis of size and color and forming repeating and non-repeating patterns by stringing beads onto a thread or wire are good activities for the nimble fingers. Besides teaching them to concentrate, this type of activity also improves their hand-to-eye coordination. This will further prepare them for another important activity — writing. Finger painting and scribbling with crayons, color pencils and markers are other avenues of creative expression. One word of caution deserves a special mention here. Tiny objects such as beads and marbles are hazardous to children, particularly toddlers. So these must be used only under strict adult supervision.

For the kindergarteners and slightly older children, playing carom, chess, guessing games with numbers, card games and board games — especially ones that use dice can be mentally stimulating as well as exciting. These children will equally enjoy solving jigsaw puzzles. Matchsticks serve as a good tool for the study of basic geometric shapes. Similarly, building blocks, modeling clay and jigsaw puzzles enable them to visualize shapes and patterns besides bringing out the creative genius within a child. Armed with ample imagination and creativity, a child could some day grow up to become a Nobel laureate with some novel invention to his credit!

The kitchen is also a very good place for instruction of mathematics. A child can be taught to count all the ingredients that go into the making of a favorite food such as chocolate cake. He/she may then be consulted for deciding on the serving size based upon the number of people in the family. This will help in explaining the concepts of division and fractions. Toddlers may be given fruits, vegetables and dried beans for counting and sorting.


The concept of time can be demonstrated by indulging in conversations about the time spent in school, in traveling to school and back home, in playing with friends, in watching the television and so on. Traveling long distances — especially in a car or train need not be monotonous. A little bit of planning and creativity can go a long way in making one reach the destination faster! Children can be initiated to play with the number plates of passing cars, compare speeds of various vehicles, count cars of a certain color, correlate distance with the amount of fuel in a car and also correlate the distance traveled with the amount of money spent on car fuel. In this manner, they can easily discover the relationships among distance, time and speed.

The habit of saving for a rainy day must be inculcated in children as early as possible. They must be taught to spend money judiciously. This will make them less prone to throwing tantrum in a toy shop. By making them sort coins from their piggy banks, they can be made to understand what money is all about.

Once in a while, it is good for parents to take the liberty of rewarding a child for a well-deserving act, with a small pack of candy, say, Cadbury’s Gems. If he/she has a flair for mathematics, the child will enjoy sorting them and playing with them as much as devouring them! He/she may then be given an exercise of sharing the candy with siblings or friends — which the child will do, albeit not too happily!

A lot many activities are also possible in a park where a child may be made to count the number of flowers in a bush or the number of petals of different types of flowers. Shapes and lengths of various leaves may be observed and recorded. They could even look for the tallest and shortest trees. A park can thus teach a child not only mathematics but also nature study, science, and so on. Children could also indulge in counting butterflies — without however wandering away from the group!

Thus, the possibilities of introducing the concepts of mathematics at an early age are virtually endless — limited only by the extent of imagination of parents and teachers. If parents and teachers can study the minds of children carefully and fine-tune their mental wavelength with those of their little geniuses, then mathematics could well be a child’s play.