Teaching young children how to match, classify, and measure is an important part of developing early math skills because these skills help children identify and describe relationships between items.

More advanced mathematical skills are based on an early math “foundation”—just like a house is built on a strong foundation. In the toddler years, you can help your child begin to develop early math skills by introducing ideas like: (From Diezmann & Yelland, 2000, and Fromboluti & Rinck, 1999.) number sense, representation, spatial sense, measurement, estimation, patterns and problem-solving.

Matching mainly involves one-to-one correspondence. This concept is so fundamental that we often don't even think about it. In order to lay a strong foundation for mathematic understanding children need to fully understand the meaning behind each of those numbers!

Children (all people really) learn best by using concrete examples, hands-on and FUN learning!

This is a great activity to practice matching (match uppercase to lowercase, rhyming words, sight words etc.)

Steps:

1. Write letters, numbers, math problems or words on a paper towel tube

2. Then on dot stickers write corresponding letters, numbers, math problems, or words

3. Have your child match the stickers to the markings on the paper towel tube