Most kids will naturally learn to recognize the numbers 1 to 10 through play and talking about it with them every now and then. This is how our first son learned his numbers 1 to 10: I wasn't actively teaching Little Mr. the numbers 1 to 10 as I didn't start 5-minute activities with him until after he finished Jim's Reading Program at 3.5 years old.
By the time Copycat came along, I was already in the habit of making 5-minute activities to accelerate their learning, so here are the 5 minute daily activities I did with my Copycat in sequential order to teach him to count to 10, and then 20. Because most toddlers will naturally learn their numbers from 1 to 10 through play, I've focused on how to teach toddlers the numbers from 11 to 20 here, but you can easily do these activities for the numbers 1 to 10 as well, which is what we did for Copycat before moving on to numbers 11 to 20. We read a counting book every night as one of his bedtime books* for this activity, so he could count to 20 before he was 3 as it was part of his daily routine.
*My son's 3 bedtime books were an alphabet book, a counting book, and a third book of his choice. So the method for teaching the numbers 1-20 is the same as the method we used to teach our Copycat the alphabet in preparation for Jim's Reading Program.
Activity 1: Learning numbers up to 20
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONE: This activity assumes your toddler knows their numbers from 1 to 10 already, but if your toddler can't count to 10 yet, these activities can easily be adjusted to help your toddler learn the numbers 1 to 10 first before repeating the same activities for 1 to 20 (which is what I did).
DURATION: 1-3 minutes
MATERIALS USED:
The numbers 1 to 20 written down one after the other on a piece of paper, or in a book
Here are the series of activities we used to teach our toddler the numbers from 1 to 10, and then 1 to 20. Because most toddlers will know their numbers from 1 to 10 just through every day play, I've focused on how we taught the numbers 11 to 20, though we used the exact same activities for the numbers 1 to 10 first with our youngest child, nicknamed Copycat. For very young children (1-2 years old), let their abilities guide when you decide to move onto the next stage: whenever you think they're ready to move on, go for it!
1a) Have them just listen to you count to 20 as you point to each number:
Every night before going to bed, we would read a counting book as one of his 3 bedtime books where I would count from 1 to 20. I would also count to 20 multiple times while brushing his teeth so he would get repeated exposure to the numbers.
1b) Have them repeat each number after you as you point to them:
Point to each number from 1 to 20 and ask them to repeat each number after you say each one.
1c) Point to each number and encourage him to say the number before you do:
In the beginning, as you count you can just point to a number, pause for a few seconds, and then say the number if they don't say it. But once they are familiar with the numbers, if they still don't say the number's name after you pause, you can try asking, "What number is this?".
Eventually, as you point to each number they'll be able to name each one without you needing to say anything!
Activity 2: Identifying randomly presented numbers 11 to 20
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONE: Child can name each number between 1-20 in order, can identify numbers 1-10 when randomly presented
DURATION: 1-3 minutes
MATERIALS USED:
The numbers 1 to 20 written down one after the other on a piece of paper, or in a book
OR teens number toys/magnets where you can pick up one teen number to ask your child about it
In the beginning, your child may just count to 10 or 20 without understanding that "one" is "1". They'll just count to 10 and randomly point to either anywhere on the page, or at the wrong numbers. So the goal of this activity is to get them to recognize the numbers individually. I wanted them to associate the fact that when they say "one", they mean the number "1", when they say "eight" they mean "8", etc. Once they could do this, we worked on understanding counting objects in these next set of activities.
See if they can identify the numbers between 1 to 20 out of order:
Choose any number between 11 and 20 (for example, 13). Point to / pick up the number 13 and ask them, "What number is this?". If you think 10 numbers is too many, start with just randomly picking between 11-13 first. At first they probably won't be able to answer you when you ask what each number is, and you'll probably have to remind them what each number is, but after a while when you ask them they'll be able to answer themselves without your help. Once they're confident with identifying the numbers 11-13 when you point at them randomly, I moved onto 14-16, and then 17-20.
REPETITIONS: Ask them to identify at least 3 different numbers (preferably more) during each 1-5 minute counting session each day until they can consistently identify each number correctly.
* It is important to re-visit numbers 1-10 while learning to identify 1-20. In our case, the Copycat did get confused between pairings such as 6 and 16, 8 and 18 for a little while, so when asking him to identify random teen numbers, I would also occasionally ask about the single digit numbers too so he could better understand that they are different numbers even though they both may have an identical digit.
We actually started teaching Copycat to recognize numbers 1-20 while also doing the 5-minute Counting Objects activities. Just identifying the numbers is very different than understanding what they mean, so we were doing two counting activities per day as we did these learning 1 to 20 activities during bedtime reading, and the "Counting Objects" activities during the day.
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