John Holt, has a lot of great ideas on how to help children conceptualize math and what it means. Just parroting numbers is meaningless to children, and by 4th or 5th grade math is confusing because the numbers are meaningless and they don't know how to transfer the numbers on the paper to what they mean in the real world, real life.
So instead of just teaching my children to count, we teach counting by actually counting items, so they can see what numbers actually mean. In so doing we have bought a lot of fun counting things. Although please do not think you have to buy anything to teach a child to count, you can count rocks, cheerios, flowers, beads, beans, macaroni, etc. However, the counting bears and counting animals are just so cute! We bought them as toys for our children and they love them. I make up a ton of games with them too. And they just love playing with them.
Another sister suggested this book Bears! Bears! Bears! in a homeschool group, and I bought it, because my son loves playing with our counting bears. And he is loving playing the games in this book! I highly recommend it! Lots of fun games to play. In my opinion this is exactly what John Holt was talking about when helping children see what numbers mean. And it's a lot of fun too.
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