How I Taught my Toddler to Read, Write and Do Math

How I Taught my Toddler to Read, Write and Do Math

Toddlers have great potential and capacity to learn. Start teaching them consistently from young and they will have an advantageous headstart in life!

Hi fellow parents, I started homeschooling my 4 year old daughter Maeleth ever since she was born since our financial condition at home wasn't stable yet and I am working from home anyway.

However, recently we were able to enroll Mae in nursery school thanks to government subsidies so that her school fees are only $3 per month. Really thankful to God for that.

Before she started school on 1 September 2020, I've been teaching her how to read, write and count ever since she was 2 years old. 

I believe that children have a great capacity and potential to learn, so I didn't hold back for my daughter.

Mae also shows the interest to learn, so your toddler's attitude towards learning new things is important too. Make the learning fun by making it seem like play time and they will absorb the knowledge better. 

I must first give a disclaimer that I am not trained or certified as an early childhood educator. I am just sharing the methods I used to teach my daughter which happened to work for her. Hopefully some of these ways I used can be helpful to you!

1) Teach Reading by Starting with Phonics

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Mae has been learning to read this story for the past few weeks. One page at a time. She managed to read the whole story through, with a few mistakes. Those are the interesting parts—where she uses phonics to piece the sound of the word together! What’s your little one’s favorite story? #sgkids #sgbaby #sgparents #sgparenting #4yearsold #circuitbreakersg #homebasedlearning #homeschool #stayhome

A post shared by Milto×” Goh | Parenting Blogger (@miltongohblog) on Apr 14, 2020 at 1:14am PDT

We are not against children having supervised screen time, so Mae has been watching kids shows on YouTube and on TV ever since she was an infant. I feel that it is better to expose her to good educational videos rather than sheltering her from devices and not teaching her anything at all. There are things shown in kids videos that we are not creative or knowledgeable enough to teach our children. 

One thing she learnt through these videos was the alphabets and their phonics sounds. This is important for setting the foundation of speaking and reading words. 

My wife Amilee and I also read books to her at night, so letting her see the words and letters also helps her to familiarize with them. 

We used to play a phonics game with Mae in the car. Everyone has to say the phonics sound of each successive alphabet, starting with A. So for example, I would start with "Eh" (for A), then Mae would say "Buh" (for B) , followed by Amilee saying "Kuh" (for C), and so on.

Through practicing like this, we help Mae to reinforce her familiarity with the phonics sounds so that she can immediately remember it when needing to read. 
 
To teach reading, the idea is to combine the phonics sounds that your toddler has learnt. So a simple word like "cat" would be "Kuh-Eh-Tuh". Make the phonics sounds for your child and encourage him or her to repeat after you. 

When your toddler gets the hang of this method, he or she will start piecing the sounds together to read words. 

Start with simple books that have some vocabulary and build upon the knowledge that your toddler has already learnt.  There are series of books available that do this well. 

Now Mae is reading books with more difficult words, and she is reading words wherever she goes. It can become a game too. When you toddler starts to read words, point at a signboard when you're outside with your toddler, and ask him or her to try and read it.

This is good training and will build reading skills.

2) Teach Writing of Alphabets and Numbers First

I don't like to use lots of paper, so we bought one of those magnetic writing boards for kids where they can just erase the writings on the screen with the click of a button.

The first thing is to teach your toddler how to properly hold a pen or pencil. Demonstrate it by holding one yourself, and help your toddler to hold it the same way. Pay attention to the way each finger wraps around the writing instrument.

After that, let your toddler practice doodling whatever he or she wants, as long as the grip is correct. The thing we want to perfect first is the grip.

When this is done, you can get your toddler to write alphabets and numbers. Just show them or a screen or write them out yourself, and get your child to copy them.

To make it easier, just teach all the capital (uppercase) letters first. Leave lowercase letters for next time.

After your toddler gets good at holding the pen, writing alphabets and numbers, you can start teaching him or her to write essential words like his or her own name.

This will be fun for your child because the name most likely feels interesting and important to him or her.

3) Teach Math Using a System of Balls and Baskets

Like how she learned the alphabets, Mae also learned about numbers through shows on TV and on YouTube. The catchy tunes and cute cartoon characters really help to make learning fun for her.  

After she could recognize numbers and write them, I taught Mae how to do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division using a system of balls and baskets. 

For addition, 4 + 3 could be 2 baskets with 4 balls and 3 balls in each one respectively. Count all the balls in total and that will give you the answer.

For subtraction, 7 - 2 could be 1 basket with 7 balls in it. Just cancel out 2 balls and count the remaining balls to arrive at the answer. 

When doing multiplication, 5 x 7 could be 5 baskets with 7 balls in each of the baskets. Then just count all the balls in total to determine the answer. 

When doing division, 8 / 4 could be 4 baskets and you have 8 balls to equally share with the 4 baskets. Just drop a ball in each basket until there are no more balls to be given. The number of balls in 1 basket is the answer.

Before getting your toddler to write all these out, you can use toys to teach this. Get little pom pom balls to be the balls, and you can use disposable bowls to be the baskets. Make it seem like a fun game where you're preparing food for a daddy or mummy. 

Now Mae is using the working method to add 4 digit numbers together. You can teach that later on, starting with single digit numbers, double digits, triple digits, then 4 digits.

While you're at it, also teach about thousands, hundreds, tens and ones. For example, teaching that 4985 is read as "four thousand nine hundred and eighty five".

Apply this in real-life scenarios whenever possible. For instance, when we bring Mae to the video games arcade, we win a bunch of tickets that can be exchanged for prizes. We have to feed these tickets into a machine that counts the tickets before tapping our card to transfer the credits to our card. 

We get Mae to read the number displayed on the screen by asking her, "Mae, how many tickets did we get?" This is fun and shows her that the knowledge she learns can really be used in real-life. 

Mae's homework of adding four digit numbers together using the 'working method'.

4) Reinforce all the Learning with 'Homework' and Mini Rewards

Mae's 'homework' of spelling words based on the drawings on the left.

I like to create 'homework' for Mae to test out her knowledge. Just make up some questions and let your toddler answer them. This way, you can see if he or she really grasps the concepts or not. I do all these in notebooks and exercise books so it feels like a school textbook whereby all her work can be revisited in there.

I also believe in the power of positive reinforcement, so I like to praise Mae for her good efforts as often as possible. When she achieves a significant milestone, giving a reward is a good way to motivate her to continue learning. 

Just as a side update, she is also learning the piano/keyboard now, by having an app called "Simply Piano" teach her. I am also learning through that app. Lots of positive reinforcement and rewards helps to spur Mae on. 

On the flip side, getting frustrated and scolding your toddler will only make them dislike learning. We have to be careful with this, and keep the atmosphere positive and fun as much as possible to facilitate the love for learning. 

One last note is that although all these types of knowledge are useful and applicable in daily life, it is far more important that our children grow up with the right values like love, kindness and goodness. Moral excellence is always more precious than head knowledge. 

Hopefully these methods were useful for you, triggering little light bulbs in your head to give good ideas for teaching your toddler. If you have any other methods you use to teach your toddler, please share them as a comment below. I look forward to reading what you have to share, thanks!

Toddlers have great potential and capacity to learn. Start teaching them consistently from young and they will have an advantageous headstart in life! This post is about how I taught my daughter to read, write and do math starting from when she was 2 years old.

I hope that you have been blessed by reading this post on "How I Taught my Toddler to Read, Write and Do Math".

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Milton Goh

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