Why early math is just as important as early reading
"To date, the most common approach to teaching early math skills has been to surround young kids with numbers alongside their letters and encourage them to practice counting just as they practice singing the alphabet. But researchers say that this approach is short-changing children. In her essay 'Math Matters, Even for Little Kids,' Stanford professor Deborah Stipek explains the parallel to the alphabet: 'Learning to count by rote teaches children number words and order, but it does not teach them number sense, any more than singing the letters L-M-N-O-P in the alphabet song teaches phonemic awareness.'"
