ABSTRACT
By the time a child has developed most of the skills listed at the beginning of Chapter 4, he will be ready to generate a lot of his own learning, especially in areas like imaginative and constructive play. Whilst formal skills such as counting, colour naming and picture matching become appropriate at this stage, it is important to encourage all forms of play as they all add to a child’s global understanding of concepts like number and size. It is also important in encouraging these sorts of skills more systematically and directly, to keep the activities at an enjoyable ‘fun’ level for the child. As ever there are wide variations in children’s personalities and whereas one child seems positively to enoy a ‘work’ session, another child will be totally uncooperative and more entertaining means of teaching him will have to be found.
