“Fingers, fingers, 1-2-3…how many fingers do you see?”  

We are playing one of our favorite finger games. I hide one hand behind my back. When I bring it forward, I hold up some fingers and the children shout out the number of fingers that they see.

“Three!” shout the friends playing the game.

Finger games can be played anywhere at any time because our fingers are always, well…handy! Besides, there’s a lot of math to be learned in those little fingers. Fostering a love of math in children begins with building a basic understanding of numbers.

I watch as two-year-old Jade repeatedly looks at his fingers and then back at mine as he attempts to duplicate my patterns. Children learn through their senses, and Jade is visually and physically working his way through an early math skill. He is also engaging in a sensory-motor experience that helps build abstract thinking skills.

When children engage in finger play, sing counting songs and play counting games, they are building a strong number sense. Number sense is a person’s ability to understand key math concepts such as quantities and the numbers that represent those quantities, as well as concepts such as more or less. Children with good number sense can think flexibly and fluently about numbers.

While using his fingers, Jade can feel and see the difference between the numbers 2 and 4. This developmentally appropriate math game is helping Jade connect a quantity to its numeric name—and his vocabulary is growing as he chants along with the rhyme.

Compelling new studies are also revealing how hands literally “help the brain think.” According to the website Science Translated—which educates students and the public about ongoing scientific research in a simple, jargon-free way—”Children clearly ‘think’ with their hands while learning to count.”

Neuroscientists and educators agree: Children who learn to use their fingers as a mathematical tool in the early years experience more success in math than those who don’t.

When children use their fingers to count, they are strengthening their number knowledge and their ability to visualize numbers in their minds. Counting is more complex than simply memorizing and reciting number words. Children need to understand the counting sequence, as well as one-to-one correspondence, cardinality and subitizing.

• Counting sequence: Counting involves using the same sequence each time, starting with one.
• One-to-One Correspondence: Exactly one number from the counting sequence is assigned to each object in the collection.
• Cardinality: The last number assigned to an object when counting the collection indicates the total quantity of objects in the collection.
• Subitizing: The ability to recognize a small group of objects without counting.

Watching and listening to children’s counting will help you see what they know and what they still need to learn. Once the children have a strong understanding of the numbers up to five, try adding your other hand to the game. For example, I show two fingers on my right hand and three fingers on my left hand. The children have to add the two sets of numbers to give me a total number.

“1- 2-3, let me see…the number two!”

We also use our fingers to play with shadows. Using the sun as a light source, I call out a number. The children then hold up the appropriate number of fingers to represent that number, casting “finger shadows” on a wall or on the sidewalk. 

This is a great way to help children build their number sense. It allows the children to work on:

• Finger-isolation activities such as pointing with the index finger, counting out the fingers on their hands or wiggling all of their fingers individually
• Thumb-opposition activities such as touching the thumb to each finger to build strength and dexterity for pencil-holding and cutting with scissors

These are all good reasons to add some finger play to your days! Keep it fun, keep it spontaneous and keep it simple. What looks like child’s play will help build a strong foundation for later math learning. You can count on that!

James bounces into our early childhood center on a gloomy March morning and asks, “Can we make muffins today?” 

“Yes! Muffins!” the other children shout, jumping up and down in what just moments before had been a calm, quiet and sleepy classroom.

We cook a lot, and over the years I have learned to stretch this activity into a “curriculum” that gives each child plenty of hands-on time with the ingredients.

There is something magical about cooking that levels the playing field and makes the activity developmentally appropriate for children of every age and skill level.

Before calling the preschoolers into our kitchen area, I prefer to prep the workspace. But on days like this—when the cooking is a spontaneous, child-led idea—I send the children to the bathroom to wash their hands and quickly get to work.

In an ideal world, I would gather all of the ingredients and take care of any prep work that might be too difficult for little hands in advance. For example, I might chop an ingredient or pour a teaspoon of vanilla into a measuring cup and then set those items out in the order that we will need them for the recipe.

“Can I crack an egg?” begs Saaliha. 

“Me, too!” shouts Marcus. The children are bouncing with energy and joy.

“I don’t like to crack eggs,” says Hudson. “Can I stir the flour and sugar?”

When I have more ingredients than children (or more children than ingredients), I get creative. If I’m working with a younger group, I’ll crack the eggs for the children and put them into measuring cups. You may need to let each child add one egg or one child add three eggs, depending on how many cooks there are and how much time you have in the kitchen.

I try to stretch out this part of the cooking sequence because every child needs a turn, and each turn is a learning opportunity. Cooking is one of those rare times when everyone is working as a team, the children are happy and helpful and the conversations are rich and engaging.

Years ago, we had a visual learner who described pouring the dirt (brown sugar) on top of the snow (flour) and then stirring in the sunshine (eggs). For years, children have repeated that same story over and over to the new children in the classroom. I have no idea how many years this has gone on or how much joy that silly little narrative has brought to the children who have walked through our door!

Count the ingredients. Count the eggs. Count the number of times each child gets to stir the mixture.

Meanwhile, expand the vocabulary of your young chefs. Ask the children to describe what they see, taste and smell. Talk about the colors and the textures.

Then ask the children to predict what will happen to the muffins or cookies when they are placed in the oven. Will they rise? Will they get bigger? Why?

Cooking gives preschoolers a strong foundation in math, science,  language, art and reading. When we invite children to create in the kitchen, we provide learning opportunities in many academic subjects.

Think of your ingredients as subsets that will introduce opportunities for counting, observing, predicting, adding, measuring, dividing and estimating.

As children see how certain ingredients combine, react and change during the cooking process, they are learning basic chemistry.

Baking also brings children together at the table to share food, conversation, observations, ideas and camaraderie. What more could you ask for in an early childhood setting?

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Waiting for muffins to bake can seem like an eternity when you are three. Don’t torture yourself or your students! Pick a recipe with minimal ingredients and shorter baking times. Instead of a 30-minute banana bread recipe, make a smoothie, muffins or cookies.

We use our baking time to take bathroom breaks, sweep the floor, wash the dishes, wash our hands and set the table so that we can feast on our masterpiece as soon as it comes out of the oven and cools. If there’s still time left on the timer, then we wash our hands again! 

Remember to keep it light and keep it fun. Sit down and enjoy the conversations and the joy of being with your young learners. Breathe in the tantalizing smell of muffins rising in the oven and give yourself the time and space to engage in these extended activities. Feast on some comfort food and engage in some delicious early science and math learning!

If you’ve got pancake fans in your classroom (and who doesn’t), we’ve got a great lesson plan for you here. Don’t forget to click on the Connect With Families button in the upper left corner of the lesson page to download a letter that gives families all of the information they need to continue the learning at home.

Each spring, we eagerly anticipate the arrival of the growing season—from the greening carpet of grass to the buds bursting into blossom on the trees. We especially delight in the dandelions that can turn any grassy area into a STEM wonderland!

Dandelions introduce so many math adventures into our early childhood program. The neighborhood park is our favorite destination for a day of dandelion STEM adventures.

Our spring dandelion days create hours and hours of exploration, investigation, observation and just plain fun!  Mother Nature is serving up math opportunities everywhere we turn!

When we find ourselves in these nature-based outdoor classrooms, the learning is always developmentally appropriate and child-centered.

On the day that this photo (above) was taken, the flowers were too tall to spend much time on patterns or subitizing or blowing seed heads in the wind. We kept finding longer and longer stems, some with flowers and some with wispy white seed heads.

The giggles were contagious as the children continued to find taller and taller dandelions. It was a day that was unplanned, so the measuring tapes were back at school, but it didn’t matter!  This was a great moment for estimating, predicting and comparing attributes side by side.

“My grammy says the tallest dandelion you can find equals how many inches you will grow before your birthday!” said one STEM explorer.

Oh boy… GAME ON!  Giggles and screams of discovery floated down the hillside as our dandelion math morning took on a life of its own.

“If you grow that much, you will be a GIANT!” predicted one preschooler as Violet studied a dandelion stem that must have been at least two feet long.

“Violet! You keep finding longer and longer stems!” exclaimed another. “Wow, look at the one behind you!  Add that to your collection! Are the tallest ones up there?”

When you are yards away from your friends AND on a hill, it’s hard to determine who has found the tallest dandelion until you walk over to compare sizes and see which dandelion has the longest stem.

Measurement is one of the earliest mathematical concepts that children learn.

Comparing the sizes of objects, determining which stem is the longest, comparing which child is the tallest and identifying that a friend is high up on the hill are all examples of the ways that young learners begin to understand the concept of measurement.

By building on this rudimentary understanding, we can help lay the foundation of logic, reasoning, comprehension and critical-thinking skills that will lead to later math success.

“Did they all grow from the same seed family?” mused one dandelion hunter.

“Maybe we blew on a tall dandelion the last time we were here and the seeds got planted in the ground and grew this tall,” postulated another.

Whoa, now those are some interesting ideas! But, before we could discuss their theories, the children had moved on to yet another area of investigation.

“Hey guys! You need to pick the flower at the very, very bottom of the stem to keep your stem super long,” instructed one of the older children.

This concept was way beyond the comprehension of some of our younger friends, despite the efforts of the other children to teach them.

Ah, the beauty of multi-age groups. The beauty of allowing learning to take place as the brain and physical development allows. The beauty of friendships and childhood on a sunny spring day, when all of the stars (or, in this case, dandelions!) align and the learning comes so naturally.

I knew that we were using our math vocabulary when I heard the words, “height, tall, taller, tallest, short, shorter, shortest, long, longer, longest, more and less.”  These simple but important words proved that the children were reaping the benefits of this springtime STEM lesson without the support of lesson plans or a word wall.

Exposure to experiences such as our Spring Dandelion Day STEM Adventure enables early learners to begin to interpret the mathematical qualities in real-world settings.

By observing, measuring, comparing and analyzing objects in their environment, they are also learning more about the world that they live in.

Our springtime “field study“ offered an invaluable opportunity for young learners to practice early math skills while guiding their own mastery of important math concepts.

The experience was an empowering one for every one of our STEM explorers, inspiring the children to build on their nascent knowledge by seeking out new ideas and experiences.

Carve out time and opportunities for your early learners to acquire, practice, rehearse and build upon the skills that will carry them through their academic life. Your math curriculum and early learning standards are outside—just waiting for you!

Click here for a lesson plan on Flower Fun and measurement for your class!