Pen-paper teaching may not catch much of your 6 year old’s attention as children at this age are more attracted to activities that seem lively and relatable to them.
Therefore, parents should focus on various activities to make a subject like Maths fun for their children. This article will help you find suitable activities with fun maths for 6 year old kids. But first, let’s learn about what topics should be taught to a 6 year old child.
What Should be the Math Topics for 6 Year Old Kids?
What does maths for 6 year olds consist of? Kids at this age are already made familiar with numbers, and hence, they should now be learning counting and calculation. Let’s take a look at the topics that should be taught to a six-year-old kid:
#1 Counting
#2 Addition and subtraction of one-digit and two-digit numbers
#3 Tables of 2, 5 and 10
#4 Fraction
#5 Money
#6 Time
#7 Discovering 2D and 3D shapes
However, parents or teachers should not keep assumptions regarding their kids’ understanding of numbers. Instead, they should keep regular checks on their knowledge through various activities. You should start with the above topics only when you are sure of your child’s understanding of numbers and countings.
Also Read:- Basic Addition and Subtraction Math Games for Kids: Make Learning Fun for the Young One
Fun Maths Teaching Activities: Guidance for Parents at Home Teaching
Here is some guidance for parents to teach maths concepts at home:
Working on Number Recognition
Although number recognition activities start early, these activities should still be made regular for a 6 year old kid. For learning maths, kids should know how to write and read numbers. There should be more practices in recognising and writing numbers.
# Try number puzzles or hopscotch.
# Make your child recognise numbers on daily objects like phone numbers, numbers on keyboards, car plates or the numbers on a house.
# Get books with practice sheets. You can also add cards with numbers.
# Make your child watch youtube videos with many poems or stories.
Incorporating Counting in Everyday Tasks
Counting forms the basis for almost every Math activity. Even if you feel your child has already grasped counting, you should still focus on making it stronger with daily life tasks. The natural incorporation of counting into your daily speeches and activities will make your children practise it independently.
If your child already seems good at counting, try making it more challenging and interesting through backward counting practices. The range of the numbers for backward counting should be small, like from 10 to 1 or 20 to 1. Make sure not to exceed the limit of more than 50.
Also, try the following activities in your child’s daily routine:
# Counting plates and glasses on the dining table or in the kitchen itself.
# Arranging and counting toys around them.
# Counting colour sticks in the box.
# Number of stop signs on the way to school.
# Counting stairs on the staircase.
These activities may seem small, but this will definitely impact your child’s counting habit if done regularly. As a parent, your role here should focus on improving and correcting them. Avoid any kind of forceful activity and try making things engaging and interesting for them.
Teach Use of Money in Daily Life
Children learn faster when activities are practical. Therefore, every time you are doing a certain activity with maths, try involving your child’s attention. For example, make your child count the apples and bananas you buy, try teaching them how much money it costs for a chocolate or a snack. Make them learn different values of coins and notes. Be sure to do this every day.
Work on Shapes
Geometry is among the important topics to be covered by a six-year-old kid. For them, geometry usually consists of different 2D and 3D shapes. You can make your kids learn the basic shapes like circle, square, rectangle, triangle, cylinder.
But, they need to recognise these shapes within their environment. You should ask your child to name shapes as you run errands. For example, you ask them the shape of the toys they play with or the food they eat. Let’s read more about such activities:
# Try baking cookies with basic shapes. Try involving your kid in shaping the cookies but avoid their involvement in the baking process.
# Get some shape-based puzzle games. Such games usually require the child to match a set of shapes or name different shapes.
# You can also make your kid engage in art and craft that involves shapes. For example, you can ask them to cut out different shapes from a magazine or newspaper and then arrange them under a particular shape.
Teach Time
You may be confused whether your child is old enough to tell time, but at the age of 6 years, children are already able to learn new concepts. However, learning time-telling is a gradual process. Your child will learn different levels of time with different ages.
# Age 5-6: Children should be taught about the hour and half-hour markers reading on an analogue clock.
# Age 6-7: Children should be aware of how many minutes makes an hour and how many hours are there in a day. Apart from this, they should also be able to tell quarter to and quarter past concepts. A 6 year old child must know to draw time in five-minute increments.
# Ages 7-8: Children at this age should be able to tell time now that they can read an analogue clock, using 12-hour clocks, 24-hour clocks, and Roman Numerals (I-XII). They should know how to compare time by hours, minutes and seconds. Make sure to refine their vocabulary with words like am, pm, afternoon, morning, night, midnight.
Teach Fraction Visually
For kids, learning fraction should be more of a visual concept than a written one. For example, kids may not be able to understand what ⅚ means on paper. However, they will find it easy to understand that if they ate 5 slices from a 6 sliced pizza, they ate 5/6th of the whole pizza. Let’s see some simple activities that can help you teach fraction to your kids:
Use Different Analogies:
Analogies are a great way of learning concepts. For instance, you can use various familiar analogies for your kids. The best of such analogies can be pizza or any other food that can be parted and used to learn fractions. Through different slices of a pizza, children will find it fun to learn a difficult concept like fractions.
Start with Fractions Used in Daily Life:
Before moving on to advanced factions, make your child learn the fractions like half, full and then simpler fractions like ⅓, ¾. Children are fast at learning the concept of half and full with their daily objects. For example, you can tell them what a half glass of milk is and how two half glasses of milk make a full glass of milk.
Also Read:- Also Read: Math Concepts for Kindergarten: How to Teach Maths to Kindergarten Children?
Bring the Concept of Numerator and Denominator:
The concept of numerator and denominator can be difficult to teach. Make your child learn how the slices they eat is the numerator, and the total slices are the denominator. This concept should always be in revision mode.
Conclusion
Math concepts should be taught to children in a fun and exciting way. Many children consider math the most difficult subject. To avoid this fear of the subject, you should be determined to build a stronger base for your kids. But make sure to do it in a fun way.
At the Real School Of Montessori, we follow project-based learning for the kids. With our personalised training and programmes, we focus on making children thinkers and innovators. For more blogs, visit The Real School Of Montessori.
