The Smith Family Share Tips on How to Develop Your Child’s Numeracy Using Everyday Activities

Reading to our children each day is something many of us parents do at night, just before bedtime. But one area of learning that doesn’t get as much focus on is numeracy.

While a new book can be read each night, it can be difficult to come up with activities that develop a child’s numeracy skills.

But The Smith Family is wanting to help parents build a fun numeracy routine with their kids.

The Smith Family is Australia’s largest children’s education charity and the organisation supports thousands of disadvantaged children through their Let’s Count program.

The program has now been revamped for businesses; employees are given a practical and informative workshop that shows them how they can develop the maths skills of young children in their care.

An experienced educator from The Smith Family conducts the program and takes participants through a range of simple games and activities they can do with their children.

Each participant takes home a goody bag and all proceeds from businesses who host a training session will go towards The Smith Family’s education programs for disadvantaged children.

The workshop only goes for an hour, so takes very little time away from work. Many parents who have taken part in the program have not only enjoyed the workshop, but they have walked away, empowered to build their children’s numeracy skills.

Nationally one is six children in Australia start school behind, so equipping parents with fun activities that help develop their child’s numeracy will mean they get a great start to their education.

The Smith Foundation encourages parents to use simple chores and activities to build a child’s numeracy skills.

Here are just some ideas to develop your child’s numeracy skills

• When making sandwiches, talk about the shapes when the sandwich is cut in halves, quarters, squares and triangles. Ask your child how many pieces of sandwich are there and how man sides does each shape have?

• Bake together and talk about measurements of ingredients, time it will take to bake and the temperature level of the oven.

• Get children to name the number of their table when at a café.

• Get children to help fold laundry. How many shirts are there in the pile? How many pairs of socks? How many individual socks have been paired up?

• Use scales and measuring containers when playing outside.

• Use measuring cups in the bath.

• Get kids to help at grocery shopping – counting the products, looking at prices and separating by size shape and colour.

With National Literacy and Numeracy Week coming up (from 4-10 September), now is the perfect time to book a Lets Count at Work session at your workplace. Head to the website for more details on how to get your workplace involved.