Exposing chiuldren to numbers early through counting and number games males them familiar with numbers from a young age.  Numbers are very important to a child's education and so many children 'struggle', but it needn't be like this.  Numbers are all around us and simply becoming familiar with numbers when they are little, is the best way to get a head start and give your children confidence for later life.  Most importantly, you don't need to be a maths genius yourself!  If you make it fun, they won't even know they are learning.

Here are a few number and counting games to introduce numbers in your everyday life:

Count things: How many pototoes on to a plate?  How many stairs as you walk up, grapes as you eat them?

Spot numbers: When you are out, look at door numbers, telephone numbers, car number plates, prices in shops and other numbers that can be observed all around.

Number games: Count the flowers in the garden, throw socks into a basket and count as you go, count how long it takes to run from one end of the garden to the other.

Number songs: Sing number songs like Once I Caught A Fish Alive, Five Fat Sausages and Ten Green Bottles.

Count your shopping:  How many pieces of fruit in the basket?  How many boxes in the trolley? Play shops at home too and count, make price tags and add up the food  you buy together.

Get cooking: Measure and weigh the ingredients, count the paper cake cases, time the cooking, give 20 stirs with a wooden spoon.

Measure things: How tall is the chair?  How tall is you child, or a teddy or the book shelf?

Get cleaning: Get your children to wipe the tables 20 times, dust the book shelf 15 times, splash the outside chairs with bubbly water 10 times.

Washing up: Count and clean the plastic cups and plates and do the washing up at the same time.  How many are in the bowl, how many are drying, how many are clean?

Have fun!

Sums, maths, numbers - what ever you choose to call it, we cannot deny that learning the basics about numbers and adding up is one of the most important things your child will learn.  Numbers are everywhere and play a great part in our lives.  Even if you consider yourself to be no mathematical genius, there is still loads that can be done to put our children on the right path when it comes to numbers.  Apart form actively helping them understand their numbers, it is great for their self esteem if a parent or carer shows an active interest and shows a positive attitude towards numbers.

Here are some tips to get involved with numbers from an early age.

1. Count steps when you climb stairs.  Practicing over and over is the way to reinforce numbers and counting.
2. Play games with your child: throw dice and count the dots, play snakes and ladders, dominoes and other number related games.
3. For older children look at money and the numbers on the coins and notes.
4. Look at door numbers when you go for a walk.  Predict what number the next house will be.
5. Do some physical games that involve scoring or counting.  How many balls can be thrown in the bucket?  How many goals did you score?
6. Make sure there are some number toys in the toy box: rulers, clock, counters and coins, tape measure, pack of cards.
7. Keep an eye out for various patterns as you go out and about.   Copy any designs you see or spot shapes in the design (floor tiles for example).
8. Look at clocks and calendars together.  Talk about time and days.
9. Do simple arithmetic.  Add up grapes at tea or sandwiches on a picnic.
10. Do cooking.  Make some simple recipes and weigh out the ingredients together.

Many games are too complicated for the youngest toddlers to grasp, but there are plenty of games you can play with a regular pack of playing cards that will introduce the whole gaming concepts to toddlers.  A pack of cards consists of 52 cards and 2 jokers - that's probably too many for most games, but pick out a suitable number of cards for your purposes, based on the capabilities of your little ones.

Pairs is a great game for toddlers.  Select your cards, maybe two suits to match numbers, or perhaps two cards from each suit (8 cards in total) to match suits.  You could just match red cards and black cards.  Lay the cards out face down and, in turns, turn two cards over.  If they match, you keep them.  Toddlers may not understant taking turns but they can play alone as a challenge. Pairs will help develop mental ability, colours and numbers.

Practice counting by taking ten cards from Ace to Ten, shuffle them and have your toddler lay the cards out in order.  This will also help tune their motor skills with careful laying out.

Hi-Lo is a great way to teach values.  Lay ten cards out, face down, in a row.  Turn over the first card, and ask your little one to guess whether the next card will be higher or lower in value than the first.  Then turn the card over and see if they were right.  This will help to develop notions of quantity as well as  reasoning and decision making.

Old Maid is more advanced for little ones.  Take two suits of cards and remove one of the two Queens.  Deal the cards out, and have each player discard any pairs.  In turn, offer your cards, face down, to the player on your left.  That player takes one card and if it matches one of their own they discard the pair.  If not, they keep the card.  Play continues until the losing player is left with the odd Queen!

Play with cards, balancing them to stand them up, lay them into patterns on the floor or lay out lines to use as roads for toy cars.  A pack of cards introduces limitless games helps your little ones practice numbers and many other skills.

Counting is an activity that you can undertake with your babies from very early on - the more they hear you counting, the more familiar it will become for them. Count fingers and toes when you are changing nappies, play counting games during the day and sing counting songs before going to bed.  A recent study undertaken by researchers at Harvard University and published in the New Scientist suggests that the ability to understand numbers as an abstract concept is innate, with babies only a few hours old being able to understand numbers.

There are a number of concepts that your baby must understand whilst learning to count.  First is the pattern of numbers: One, Two, Three and so on.  Young toddlers may well learn to count to 10 but without really undertanding what they are doing - the numbers could just be a pattern that they have learned as with any rhyme or song.  They also need to understand that numbers relate to quantity, and this is where counting play objects helps.  You might create a stack of bricks, and count each one as you pile them up; you might count teddies and sit them around a towel on the floor ready for a picnic; or your can count peas, beans or other foods on your plate.

In addition to the names of letters, the order they come in and the relationship between number and quantity, there is also the numeric representation, 1, 2, 3 etc.  Practice drawing shapes on a piece of paper and write a number under each.  Also have toddlers copy lines of letters to practice writing each letter.

Don't forget the number 0, zero, nought!  Perhaps trickier than other numbers because you can't draw 0 squares and you can't count to zero!  'Nothing' is as important a concept as all the other numbers, and its numeric representation is important too!

There's so much for your babies to learn in order to learn counting, numbers and the ability to write numbers, but as with everything else at this age, they'll pick it up amazingly quickly just with regular exposure rather than hard work!  Obviously you want to push your children as hard as they can learn, but you will see signs if it's just too early for them to be learring, so just take it easy, they will get there eventually!