As featured on the Wichita Mom Blog, written by Katherine Earles, Head of School.
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When Katherine Earles was preparing her children for kindergarten, getting them ready to read was important, but developing their math mind was equally important.
As a former Wichita State University instructor who taught elementary education majors how to instruct young children in math, Earles has thought a lot about developing children’s math minds. Now she gets to put many of those principles into practice as the head-of-school and sixth grade math teacher at Christ the Savior Academy, a classical, Christian school at 13th and Rock Road.
Earles believes parents can play a huge role in getting their children ready and excited to learn math before they even begin school. Fortunately, none of her ideas involve flashcards, but, rather, games that your child will beg to play again and again.
“Games are a wonderful way to build real number sense at home,” Earles said. ”Some of our favorite games to encourage counting and addition skills are those that have dice with dots, number spinners or dice with numerals. It’s so much fun to play these simple games with your young children when you notice them learning along the way. Just remember, the goal is not speed or memorizing “math facts”. Rather, the goal is understanding, becoming friends with the numbers we encounter.”
Read the rest of the blog post on the Wichita Mom Blog:
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