Math with a 4 month old

Early Learning Teaching Your Child Math
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I started with dot cards with my boy a month or so ago (when he was 3 months old). I have no idea if he understands what it is all about, but he smiles when the cards come out. I have the cards face down in front of me and flip them up one at a time, saying the number. I know that isn’t exactly how it is meant to go, but it means I can put each card in a slightly different place and then watch for his gaze to shift, so I know he is looking at the cards and not staring into space.

We have been doing dot cards and started on addition recently. Given that he is so young (most people here seem to be teaching kids 7months+) should I be going slower than ‘recommended’? My concern is mainly around the Problem Solving. He doesn’t yet have the ‘skill’ to select between two cards.

I have been trying to ‘teach’ him to select between two alternatives by asking him which book he’d like me to read and then reading the one he smiles at. Or which toy he’d like. So far it is hit and miss. Sometimes he ignores one option completely and waves excitedly at the other. Other times he looks between them both half a dozen times then stares at me. This is a skill we both have to learn (As I need to learn how to read the signals he is giving) so I am trying to introduce it in situations where there is no ‘wrong’ answer.

What age should I expect him to be able to ‘choose’ between two options? Given that he seems to be enjoying where we are at so far, should I continue with the dots (we still have a lot to introduce) and the addition, and hold off the more complicated stuff till later?

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Kat25,

We started with math flash cards when our daughter was 4 months old. As you said they can’t do problem solving, so just keep teaching you baby he is processing all the information. We never worried about the problem solving part until she was around 7 months old and not even then did it that often.

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Thanks. I should have given him more time. He was grizzling yesterday (teething). I had tried to get him happy with all the toys and games he had, but nothing was working. So I held him on my lap with a toy while I was at the computer and let him grizzle quietly. He often sits on my lap and plays little attention to what I am doing.

Yesterday, I was finishing up some slides which show math using dots. When I went to preview them the grizzling stopped. I looked down and discovered he was staring at the dots on the computer screen. I had planned to just preview them for myself and introduce it to him in a few weeks. But his obvious interest made me re-think. I went through each equation providing the number for the dots. By the third equation he was quite excited.

I have never before attempted to show him the cards unless he has been fully alert and rested, so it was amazing that some math equations with dots cheered him up when any number of games and brightly coloured toys had failed to.