As soon as my children are comfortable counting. I introduce them to whisper counting. Why? Mostly because it is fun. You alternate whispering and shouting numbers and children enjoy whispering and shouting, especially if it is in a place that you normally don’t shout…like the grocery store!
Whisper counting lays the foundation for teaching the concept of even and odd. You whisper the odd numbers and shout the even numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc. I make a point of saying “we whispered the odd numbers and shouted the even numbers” each time we do it to build that vocabulary for the future.
Once my children are comfortable with whisper counting, I use it to introduce them to the concept of skip counting. It makes it easy for them to recognize which numbers they say when counting by twos – they only count the numbers that they shouted in whisper counting: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc.
Both of these games lay the foundation for later explaining that odd numbers are any integer that cannot be divided by two.
What fun math games do you play with your littles?
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Michelle says
That’s a great idea — I’ll have to try it with my two littlest ones!
vickie says
What a great idea-I’ll be giving this a try
April @ The 21st Century Housewife says
Great ideas! It’s so much better when learning is fun – especially when it’s math!! Thank you for sharing this post with The Gallery of Favorites.
Annie Jones says
Thanks for the tip. Kat just brought home a paper today where she’d missed several of her odds vs. evens. We’re going to give this a try.