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Every Kid Deserves the Chance to Learn and Grow

Pair these FREE educator-developed printable activities with your favorite Encantos videos, books, and songs to help your child develop critical reading, writing, math, and social emotional learning skills. Plus, check out our Tips for Grown-ups to help reinforce the teachable moments in each lesson.

Oct 20, 2022 - 4 min

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Numeracy: Not just a math skill, it’s a life skill!

Children who develop math skills early on are better set up to be successful academically and in life. Learn how to build your child’s numeracy through everyday activities.

Preparing a tasty meal, shopping for new shoes, knitting a scarf — these all may seem like unrelated activities, but they have one thing in common: Numeracy. Cooking requires measuring ingredients, shopping means counting money, and knitting requires estimating how much yarn you’ll need to finish a project. 


Numeracy involves recognizing and understanding how math plays a role in our world and the wide range of situations in which we use and interpret mathematical information in our daily lives. We use numeracy to resolve problems, think critically, make logical decisions, and try to make sense of the things around us. 


It’s common knowledge that children are most open to learning when they’re young. Their curiosity for the world around them and innate capacity for asking questions sparks their learning journey as they begin seeking answers and experiencing new things. That’s why numeracy is something we begin developing at a young age and use throughout our lives.


Early numeracy skills include verbal counting, spatial sense, comparing and ordering, identifying patterns, estimating, recognizing and manipulating quantities, and measurement. Research shows that core educational skills, such as math and numeracy, are essential to a child’s future success academically and in life. 


Tips on how to build your child’s numeracy skills:


  • Connect math to daily life - There are so many opportunities for you to help build your child’s numeracy skills. Take advantage of these math moments! Have your child count the amount of items in the grocery cart, ask word problems that pertain to what you’re doing (ex: 7 people are coming over for dinner and we have 3 chairs at the table. How many more chairs do we need to get?), have them help you measure out ingredients when you’re cooking, etc.
  • Focus on problem solving - Rather than just trying to get the right answer, have your child focus on solving the problem and coming up with multiple solutions, and make them share their thinking along the way. Promote a growth mindset by using mistakes to help guide your child’s learning. 
  • Learn through play - Games are a great way for parents to get involved in their child’s learning. Use games and activities to help your child notice shapes, numbers, patterns, size, and more. Try ‘I spy’, board games with dice, card games, puzzles, sorting and matching games, building blocks, and singing songs with counting sequences and rhymes.


How the Encantos app can help kids develop numeracy:


The Encantos app features many storyworlds that are great for building children's numeracy. Check out the Canticos, Monster Math Squad, and Umigo storyworlds for interactive videos and games to help develop and grow your child’s early math skills. 


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Ask a Bilingual Expert

Raising a bilingual child? On this page, our very own Director of Learning Design and Efficacy, Sophia Espinoza, addresses some of the most common questions, concerns, and curiosities around the benefits of bilingualism. Get the scoop below!

Sophia Espinoza is a career educator and curriculum designer with seven years of experience teaching in private and independent schools across the country. She is an expert in 21st-century education, including technologically-powered personalization, multilingual and multicultural curriculums, and social-emotional learning.

Sophia began teaching in Chicago Public Schools through Chicago Teaching Fellows, learning to support both English Language Learners and students with neurodiverse needs. Among her proudest accomplishments is launching the AltSchool Spanish Immersion Program, with the mission of creating bilingual global citizens who are socially conscious and environmentally aware. Sophia holds a B.A. from Northwestern University and M.A.Ed. from Dominican University.

Benefits of Bilingualism (FAQs):

Any advice on managing two Spanish dialects in the household? Does this cause confusion for kids?

What do you recommend if I’m not completely fluent and my child’s school doesn’t have an immersion class?

Do you recommend teaching different subjects in different languages? For example, the solar system in English and the days of the week in Spanish? Or is it better for kids to try to learn in both languages all the time?

We speak Spanish and English in our home but my child almost always answers or talks back in English. How can I go about encouraging her to respond and speak more in Spanish?

Should I set aside time or create activities for each language or is it okay to mix them both together?

Any advice for households where one parent speaks Spanish and the other English? Can this be confusing for children?

How can my child learn language through play?

What are the social and cultural benefits of bilingualism?

What are some of the cognitive benefits of bilingualism?

What are some strategies for raising bilingual children?

What are some common misconceptions about raising bilingual children?

What are some of the cognitive benefits of bilingualism?