How Do We Ignite The Math Brain?

The unborn child's brain begins to relate to  patterns and rhythms of mother's voice as she reads and music when she  dances before he is born.

After birth, the stimuli in voice and vision begin to build the brain cells.  The first two years of life is the period of time for the greatest growth of brain cells in vocabulary building for speech.  This is the time we must interactively ignite the brain with exposure to words of every variety.

  After the age of three, unused brain cells will diminish.   That's why feral children that have been abandoned or "raised" with animals ( in rare instances) may never gain full speech.
That's because they lost that early period of speech development with humans.


So, we have to make it count from the earliest days.  It's never too early to read to infants.  We can do it in a rhythmic way.  A rattle, and a bounce toy can be played interactively to music.  Babies up to two years should be showered with pictures and books of animals, places, things, numbers everything we can talk about, name and describe.  Attention span is very short but the material has to be surrounding the child.  Remember, brain cells are being ignited to build on new learning.

These are my top ten Prerequisites after excellent prenatal care:

1.  Safe and (physically and emotionally) secure home surroundings

2.  Excellent nutrition according to pediatrician

3.  Attention to all health matters (illness or Doctor's appointments

4.  Secure the child in loving, gentle soft touch and firm holding

5.  Show affection with touch, voice,  kissing, snuggling and physical contact

6.  Interactively play with child and expose to tactile materials (soft, sticky, stiff, rough fuzzy,bumpy, etc.  and tell the describing names.)

7.  Read to your child early in a rhythmic way and describe the pictures.

8.  Have at your disposal stacks of pictures of any and everything from  people, animals,  outdoors scenes, mountains, exotic places, buildings, numbers.  Cards can be purchased, magazine pictures, or free downloads, etc.

9.  Dance with your child.  Hold your child. Put on music and dance to beats. Count the beats.

      As the child gets older he will count with you and get the patterns. This is building the math mind. 

10.  Interactive play with toddler toys to incorporate math principles such as counting blocks.  Take one away, cover one up,  put two more in, practice counting songs.  "Let's stack 4 blocks, take 2 away, how many blocks are in the tower?  Hide and Seek!  Count to 5...
Count to 10.


Now we are moving into NUMBER SENSE.  This is how we know Quantity.  The base ten numeration system is the foundation of understanding number sense.  The place value system is based on ten symbols.  It is the ultimate recycling plan.  After nine there are no more symbols, so we go to ten.



Let's make a Number Map!


On a large chart paper, write, or use commercial numbers, 1-10.   Find inexpensive stickers to count out that number.  Stick that many under the number.  Write the ordinal number above and show the child the word for that number.  A toddler can only keep their attention for a few numbers at a time.....but that's OK!   We can go back to it later with different stickers that maybe more relevant to where his interest lies.  This ignites counting and number sense.