Preschool play centers present a perfect opportunity for children to develop counting, number sense, geometry concepts and pattern recognition. If you develop a math center with an assortment of colored blocks, beads, animals, shapes, abacuses and other materials, children can practice math skills on the floor or table. A child can make patterns, sort objects by color or shape and recognize colors. The Michigan Department of Education explains helping children recognize patterns, for example, is easy using materials you already have at home (or at school). Children can recognize number patterns playing with dominoes or Go Fish cards.
Preschool programs include a heavy focus on literacy. Teachers read children at least one book, but sometimes three or four books, each day. Teachers and parents can use counting books to help children with math and literacy. The U.S. Department of Education, and many states, offer suggested book lists for preschoolers, parents and teachers. In its 2002 report "Teaching Our Youngest," the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services defined counting books with this characteristic: "each page usually presents one number and shows a corresponding number of items (two monkeys, five dinosaurs and so forth)."
The "Teaching Our Youngest" report also recommends teaching children about numbers and counting in everyday situations. You can refer to objects and count objects in daily routines. One example is asking preschoolers to help you count cups as you serve drinks. When children select their own toys to play with in a center, you can ask them how many toys they have. Each time you discuss numbers in context, you help children develop math skills.
Looking for shapes in the environment represents another way children learn geometry concepts. Try working with shapes in the kitchen. For example, talk about how a baking sheet is a rectangle, a cake or round cookie is a circle and a cereal box has rectangles on six different sides. If the cereal does not present a choking hazard, you can give a child cereal and ask him or her to build shapes from the pieces.