If you are a parent, as your child heads into kindergarten, you will be filled with all sorts of emotions. You may be thinking and wondering: How can my baby be that old? Are they ready? What exactly are they going to learn in kindergarten?

While kindergarten may look different from when you were a child, it still creates the foundation of your child’s schooling. Supporting your child with these fundamental skills with greatly help them be prepared for the challenges in their schooling years to come. If you are looking for resources to get you started, you have come to the right spot! TheWorksheets.com provides many worksheets that can be used to grow their independence and understanding of mathematical concepts!

If you are a teacher looking for ways to support the learning children in your classroom, you are welcome too! This article will provide you with many resources and tips and together we can work to make each child confident in their mathematical abilities!

In Kindergarten, children will be exploring, experimenting, counting, sorting, and explaining. Young children often have trouble with symbolic understanding. Because of this, kindergarten classrooms use many manipulatives. A manipulative is anything that a child can count or physically handle that can help him or her learn a given concept. It is typical to see  math manipulatives such as cubes, dice pattern blocks, clocks, and puzzles.

 For example, when someone says “nine,” as an adult we have no trouble visualizing nine objects as well as the numeral 9, but it’s not as simple for children. By having something physical like a manipulative to work with, children eventually bridge the gap between the world they live in and the world of symbols

Manipulatives to support your child do not need to be anything fancy! You can use everyday items around your home to make math more concrete for a young learner. For example, beans, pasta, and cereal can be used as counters or to practice estimation or measurement. Dice from your favorite board game can be used for counting activities! String beads on pipe cleaners to use them as counters, or place them in egg cartons as impromptu ten-frames. The options are endless!

The worksheets provided in this article from TheWorksheets.com provide many examples and practice that can help them have a deeper understanding of these mathematical practices.

Foundational Skills for Creating a Confident Kindergarten Mathematician

Many of the new Math Standards identify a set of skills students must master to help them be successful in their future schooling. These skills include Counting and Cardinality, Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Number and Operations in Base Ten, Measurement and Data, and Geometry. These skills are important to a child’s development within math and teachers and parents can use the worksheets provided by TheWorksheets.com to support their growth in these domains. 

Counting and Cardinality:

Students enter kindergarten with a broad range of experiences with numbers. Some will be able to count by rote from 1 to 100 (or a part of that range). Others may have very limited experience with counting to 10.  By the end of the year, students should be able to successfully know number names and count in sequence, count to tell the number of objects, and compare numbers.

Number Names and Counting:

Students work over the course of the year to count from 1 to 100. They begin counting by ones, and as the range of numbers grows, they also count by tens. Once students are fluent at counting beginning with 1, they begin to work on counting forward from a number other than 1 within a given range. Students should also be able to recognize and write the numerals 0 to 20.

Number Writing Worksheets

Counting Worksheets

Counting Objects:

Students move from rote counting (above) to finding the number of objects in a set. Cardinality refers to the actual count or number of items in a given set. This topic connects to the previous! As students get better at rote counting within a range of numbers, for example, once they can count from 1 to 10, they can begin to find the number of objects in a set within 10! This can then be advanced by the child answering “how many” questions within 20.

Counting Objects Worksheets

Comparing Numbers Worksheets

Once they can count and identify a number of objects in a set, they must identify whether the number of objects in one group is greater than, less than, or equal to the number of objects in another group. They can achieve this by using matching and counting strategies.

Comparing Numbers Worksheets

Operations and Algebraic Thinking:

I know what you’re thinking, algebraic thinking in kindergarten? I promise you, it isn’t as complex as the standard has you believe. The basics is that your child or student needs to understand addition means putting together and adding to, and that subtraction is taking apart and taking from. That’s it! The following worksheets from TheWorksheets.com will help your child/student gain a deeper understanding of addition and subtraction within 10!

Addition Within 10 Worksheets

Subtraction Within 10 Worksheets

“Make a 10” Worksheets

Number and Operations in Base Ten:

In kindergarten, students must work with numbers 11-19 to gain foundations for place value. At this young age, place value means the ability to understand that a 1 isn’t just a 1 and in a number like 12, the one represents 10 ones and is considered 1 ten. Additionally, in a number like 11, the one to the left represents 10 (or 10 ones) and the 1 to the right represents 1. Although this may sound like a simple concept to us, it is often difficult for young new learners. The following worksheets will help students understand these basic concepts of place value which will help them be successful in first grade when students work with numbers within not only the ones and tens place value, but also the hundreds place value up to 120.

Base Ten Worksheets

Writing Numbers Within 20

Measurement and Data:

In kindergarten, measurement and data is broken up into two main sections, basic measurement and data: sorting and classification. 

Basic Measurement:

Within basic measurement students use nonstandard units of measurement, such as craft sticks, cubes, and paperclips to determine the length or weight of objects. As they work, students explore key measurement ideas. They learn the importance of lining up tools with the object to be measured, what happens if those units are (or are not) laid straight, or if there are (or are not) gaps between them. Measuring with units is a complicated concept that develops gradually over the elementary years. Students often need repeated opportunities to measure using repeated units with accuracy and precision to describe a length.

Kindergarten Measurement Worksheets

Nonstandard Units of Measurement Worksheets

Data: Sorting and Classification:

Students in kindergarten need to be able to classify objects and count the number of objects in each category! The worksheets below can help provide many examples for students.

Sorting Worksheets

Geometry:

Geometry in kindergarten?! While your young student is not going to be figuring out theorems and solving proofs in kindergarten, many geometry concepts are introduced! Kindergarten geometry focuses mainly on identifying shapes. By the end of kindergarten, your child should be able to identify circles, squares, rectangles and ovals easily. Once they can identify them, they should be able to describe them to you! Sides and vertices are the two most basic parts of a shape, they can use these terms to describe shapes along with size and similarities and differences between other shapes. Children should also practice drawing these shapes and building them out of model materials such as sticks and clay.

A cube, cylinder, sphere and pyramid are all shapes that your kindergartner comes in contact with every day! Once the two-dimensional shapes are known, mix in conversations about three-dimensional shapes which can start by finding them in everyday life.

Basic Shape Worksheets 

Drawing Shapes 

Identifying Shapes

3-D Shapes

Conclusion

When deciding on worksheets for a child to build their foundational skills within math, it is vital to see what background knowledge they have! Many of these basic skills can easily be turned into conversations at the dinner table or out and about in nature. 

Once your child masters these foundational skills, they will be successful as the rigor increases in first grade and they go from working with numbers within 20 to numbers within 120. By increasing practice at the kindergarten level, your child will gain number sense or their ability to understand, relate, and connect numbers. 

Number sense is so beneficial for young math learners because it not only increases confidence but encourages flexible thinking. It allows children to create relationships with numbers and be able to talk about math as its own language! Numbers are like letters. Each letter has a sound that come together to make words and every digit has a value and when you put those digits with values together they make numbers!

TheWorksheets.com is filled with incredible resources to help each and every child grow in their math skills! These resources have been gathered by educators and parents alike for the benefit of the mathematician inside each child!