1-2-3: Teach your kids to count today

Teaching your kids to count is simple. It’s as simple as 1-2-3. And the great thing is that everyday life is jam-packed with things to count. From the number of tomatoes in a salad to the the number of butterflies on your child’s t-shirt.
 
Numbers are everywhere. All you need to do is make your kids see that. Integrating numeric awareness into daily life is not only fun but highly effective.
 
When you look at it like that, you’ll soon see how easy it is to make teaching your kids to count an integral part of your everyday routine. And TinyTap can help with that. Here’s how.
 
Step 1: Make it snappy
Snap a few everyday pictures. These must feature countable objects. This could be a picture of anything. But try and stick to things that are familiar to your kids like their teddies or maybe even different leaves. We’ve found that games made from images with sentimental value have more impact on kids.

Step 2: Get counting
Now it’s time to create the games. Creating games with TinyTap is simple and there are several ways you can go about this. Depending on the age of the child you may decide to let your child create their own games. Making children active in the learning process is a great way to reinforce concepts.
 
For parents with younger kids, here are some fun game ideas you can easily create that will have them counting in no time.
 
– Counting fruit
1. Take a picture of some fruit.
2. Add some narration. You can state how much fruit there is and then get your child to make the connection between the number in it’s spoken and written form.
3. You could also simply ask your child to count how much fruit there is encouraging a child to count and recognize the difference between numbers.


– Counting clothing
1. Take a picture of your child’s clothing.
2. Add the narration. There are plenty of options here. You could ask your child to count all the clothing.
3. You could also ask your child a question which requires them to make sense of concepts like more or less. For example, there are lots of short and t-shirts . But what are the more of? Tap on what there are more of.


Step 3: Do it everyday
TinyTap is all about taking everyday moments and turning them into games. And that means you can draw on everyday examples to create educational games. There’s no better way to teach kids to count then to sensitize them to the importance of numbers.
 
Make it something you do daily. Spend some time with your kids spotting countable objects and numbers in their written form. Take a picture of all these occurrences. You can then turn all these pictures into a TinyTap game which revises all the numbers learnt in a fun and engaging way.
 
Good luck and happy counting!