– Reading bedtime stories became a parent’s daily duty as common as encouraging their kids to teeth-brushing. The next very important step is to take the same kind of good habit with early Math. According to researchers of DREME (Development and Research in Early Math Education), it’s time for Dad and Mom to teach their preschoolers basic math concepts with the same zeal they do with reading.
– “We’re about 25 years behind in math,” said Deborah Stipek, professor of education at Stanford University and head of DREME Network. The huge advantages of early math education are no longer in doubt. In 2007, a ground-breaking study showed that the math level at kindergarten entry strongly predicts not only later math skills, but also later reading skills. Such results seem to be due to the multiple benefits of learning math on attention, concentration, memory and problem solving abilities.
– “Parents don’t really think about math as something you do at home, they think about it as something you do in school,” said Stipek. In thinking so, however, they miss an incredible opportunity to foster at the most favorable moment the optimal development of their children.
Renaissance Mathematics (Wikimedia)
