Improving Preschoolers Skills

Ivanhoe Newswire

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Numerical board games may help bridge the gap of math knowledge between poor children and middle-income ones -- and it all starts in preschool.

New research from Carnegie Mellon University finds playing the games can improve the number skills of low-income preschoolers.

Children from poor families tend to have much less math knowledge than their middle-class peers. This can have big consequences with long-term effects; proficiency in math when children start kindergarten strongly predicts their math achievement test scores years later. The study notes the difference in math knowledge is probably a reflection of how much the children are exposed to numerical activities at home, including board games. Games with consecutively numbered, linearly arranged spaces such as Chutes and Ladders give kids a good chance to learn about the relationship between numbers and their sizes.

During the study, low-income preschool students who attended Head Start centers played a numerical board game for four 15-minute sessions. Researchers found this increased their ability to count, identify printed numbers, compare the relative sizes of numbers, and estimate their position on number lines. The progress the children made lasted nine weeks after the experience.

Researchers say playing numerical board games seems to be an effective and inexpensive way to improve preschoolers math skills and to help make more equal the numerical knowledge low-income and middle-income students bring to schools.

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SOURCE: Child Development, 2008;79

Last updated 3/27/2008.

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