Ensuring that your child has basic counting skills can be one of the most stressful aspects of parenting. But learning about numbers can fit easily into your daily routine and, believe it or not, can become fascinating too. The best news is that being useless at maths yourself (as I was) should not get in the way of teaching your child about numbers and counting. In fact the ‘maths genius’ parent is not always a good teacher because it all seems so obvious to her. Your difficulties with maths might be your passport to success with your child because you are prepared to explore and explain.

Numbers are everywhere
One of the problems with maths, occurs when people view it as something separate- a ‘subject’, rather than a part of everyday life. But your child will already know the sentence, ‘One for you, and one for Mummy’. That’s where maths starts, right where it matters. When you’re in the supermarket, talk about how many cartons of orange juice you should buy, how many friends are coming for tea, how many sticky buns you need so that everyone can have one? You want to get across a couple of important concepts early on. ‘One to one correspondence’ is a fancy way of saying there must be a cup for each bear at the Teddy Bears’ picnic. Sequencing is when you order things such as Daddy bear, Mummy bear and Baby bear in order of size. You can also get across valuable words like small, bigger, biggest through play.

Simply reciting ‘One, two, three’ however, doesn’t mean she has a clue about what these words mean. This reciting is called rote counting. It is only in the second stage that the child understands the relationship between the counting numbers and the objects. She then also learns that the order in which the toy soldiers are counted does not affect the total. This is sophisticated. You may have to play this game often, counting the soldiers into groups of two, three and four. Count them over and over again.

Numbers, not labels
Some children get stuck for a while, believing that when we count three cups we are in fact giving a name label to each cup. This child will happily watch as you count pointing to the cups. She will agree that you have three. But when you take one cup away and ask ‘How many cups are there?’ she will still say three. You remind her you have removed one. Yes, she says, but you still have two and three. This is a common hurdle and you will need patience to make it clear that you are counting each object, not giving it a name. Do not believe she is stupid, nor tell her so. The third stage is when the child understands the permanent value of what she counts. If we have a packet of 10 sweets, they remain 10 sweets when we spill them on the table. Children do not automatically know this. This is called "conserving the numbers".

Games and rhymes
You want to play at using numbers as describing words. Gradually help her to understand that two is more than one, that three is more than two. Through play and talking she will come to understand. Have her arrange them in order, make a set of domino cards with black dots and corresponding number cards. Finding the right number card to go with the number of dots is a challenge. But teaching numbers does not have to be all structured games. Every face has two eyes, dogs have four legs. Games as you walk along are based on numbers with little effort. Touching and counting each object in the toy box helps make the one-to-one correspondence clear. Personalised rhymes can help too:

"There are five cookies in the dish,
Soon Simon will get his wish.
He’ll take a cookie and run for the door,
And on the plate there’ll be only four".

Children should also meet numbers in an arbitrary order. Your fingers are ideal to prove the ‘fiveness’ of five. There are always the same number hanging there on the end of your hand. But you only have two hands. Our bodies are evidence of nature’s random arrangements. Play games in which a child has to ‘Find me a five’. Thread buttons or macaroni onto a shoelace and count them, count the bricks as you build a tower and knock it down, draw the number shapes with a wet finger on the front path, or model them in plasticene. They should be familiar old friends by the time your child goes into the reception class. Later, when it comes to understanding tens and units, try bundles of matches tied up in tens – practical everyday solutions make maths an integral part of your lives.

Adrienne Katz is the author of You Can Teach Your Child About Numbers