[Math] Revising numbers with 3D puzzle

Hubby made a day trip to Singapore and returned with a small box of 3D puzzle for Jae (4y4m).

We got round to fixing it, amidst little El who was a handful.

There were 80 pieces. We started with the single digits, so Jae had to fish for them, with a bit of my help. (The font was absolutely tiny!)

Then moved on to the teens. He initially got confused between numbers like 14 and 41. (We haven’t worked much with math since he attended kindy this year.)

I showed him a few more examples, reading the numeral in Chinese as well.

(Numbers in Chinese are short and sweet. Also no confusion for the teen numbers. 十四 means 10 and 4, instead of fourteen, which mention “four” first.)

Then we moved on and finally reached 80. By this time, he’s a mini expert in reading 2-digit numbers.

2 days after fixing the puzzle, Jae correctly read that our table number (at a cafe) was “23”. So the knowledge has stuck with him.

Over the weekend, he also played with a calculator and asked me to read out numbers such as 506,385,393,961. His interest in reading numbers has been kicked off by this puzzle.

Great, mastered one math skill while having fun and getting a toy jet plane at the end!

(Where to get: Any jigsaw puzzle specialty shop probably carries such puzzles.)

P.S. Check out my workshops here

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