Making Math Fun for Young Children

Target age: parents of children ages 2 through 8.

Including math experiences and math talk into your child’s everyday life can be fun and can support their academic growth; early math skills have been shown to be more powerful predictors of later academic achievement in both math and reading than attention, socioemotional, or reading skills. (Duncan et al, 2007)

Just as children’s development in movement follows a (generally) predictable path (crawl, stand, walk, run, jump, skip), children’s growth in math follows a natural developmental path. When parents understand these paths, they can make math fun — providing math experiences, math talk, and math games in ways that are attuned to their child’s development.

During the "Making Math Fun" workshop, parents will learn about developmental paths in a few areas of math (counting, subtilizing, geometry, addition), practice a variety of fun games to bring home to support math development, and learn how to vary the games based on children’s levels. Parents will also have a chance to exchange ideas and tips that work for their families in supporting math.

Jennifer Woodruff currently works at Bank Street College of Education specializing in early childhood mathematics. She co-founded La Escuelita, Manhattan’s first Spanish/English dual language preschool. Jennifer graduated from Stanford University and holds a M.S. from Bank Street College of Education, and an Ed.D from Teachers College, Columbia University.