A researcher argues families can strengthen early math skills through everyday conversations, play and carefully chosen activities rather than worksheets.
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For families with children newly entering kindergarten or Grade 1, fall routines can bring both excitement and anxiety, including questions about how to support learning at home without turning family time into school, according to Ozlem Cankaya.
Cankaya says mathematics learning often receives less attention than early literacy, but early numeracy knowledge is a strong predictor of later academic achievement. She argues parents can support foundational math skills through ordinary moments—such as counting stairs, comparing which glass has more juice, building with blocks, noticing patterns, and discussing whether each child in a group has an equal number of jellybeans.
A key early skill, Cankaya writes, is learning the verbal counting sequence, noting that counting is not equally easy in every language. She describes how some number systems follow regular underlying structures—such as Mandarin Chinese after 10, where number words like “ten-one” and “ten-two” map closely to base-10 patterns—while English and French include irregularities that may require additional practice with parts of the counting sequence.
Cankaya also emphasizes that adult beliefs and attitudes toward mathematics matter. She says research increasingly suggests that mathematics anxiety can be transmitted across generations through parents’ avoidance and interactions around mathematics.
Rather than framing math as frightening or as a fixed ability, Cankaya recommends that parents avoid telling children they are “not a math person” and instead respond to difficulty with messages such as “Numbers can be tricky sometimes. Let’s figure it out.” She adds that challenges can be treated as a natural part of learning.
To make mathematics part of daily life, Cankaya suggests families use board games involving numbers or dice to support counting, number recognition, and understanding of numerical magnitude. She says cooking with children can also offer math-rich experiences, including counting spoonfuls, measuring ingredients, dividing food into equal portions, and discussing container fullness.
Cankaya further recommends turning everyday objects into materials for math conversations and play. Items such as buttons, lids, stones, sticks, cardboard tubes and blocks can be sorted by size or shape, arranged into patterns, counted, compared, and used for construction, she writes.
On the role of technology, Cankaya cautions that an “educational” label does not guarantee effective learning. She says parents should look for math apps whose design and content align with how young children learn, including features like level adjustment, minimized distractions, language that matches children’s understanding, and meaningful feedback rather than simply announcing right or wrong answers.
Cankaya adds that digital learning should supplement hands-on exploration and adult conversation rather than replace it. She also points to block play as a simple, established method for supporting early mathematical learning, describing how it can involve creating and extending patterns, comparing size and shape, experimenting with balance, and practicing reasoning about space and object properties.
She notes that block play may also support executive functioning—the set of skills children use to pay attention, plan, remember information and regulate their actions—adding that executive functioning plays an important role in children’s academic learning.
Cankaya concludes that children do not need home worksheets to build foundational math knowledge, and argues families can instead provide frequent opportunities to encounter numbers, quantities, shapes, patterns, measurement and spatial relationships while also giving children language to describe what they notice. She suggests practical routines such as counting together, cooking together, building things, and playing board games, along with asking questions and discussing mistakes as part of learning.
The author, Cankaya writes, receives funding from the Spencer Foundation and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and is affiliated with the Council for Early Learning and Care, Terra Centre, and the International Toy Research Association.
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