From a recent Education Week article:
Greg Duncan and his colleagues found that in a comparison of math, literacy, and social-emotional skills at kindergarten entry, “early math concepts, such as knowledge of numbers and ordinality, were the most powerful predictors of later learning.” A large-scale Canadian study from 2010 echoes those findings: Math skills at school entry predicted math skills and even reading skills in 3rd and 2nd grade, respectively, better than reading skills at school entry.
Early math concepts can be developed through conversation. In the coming weeks and months, you’ll see these develop in my children. You’ll see that the conversations we have are easy to have with your own children.
And hopefully, you’ll send reports of your conversations with your own children. We’ll document them all here.