PWO: Numbers Age 3-4 Bk Sticker

Excellent Purchase - Would Buy Again

During lockdown, this was a life saver for my 3,5 year old. I loved the online resources but as they were limitless and chaotic sometimes. This helped have a daily structure without the stress of the in advance planning. My little one also loves the reward stickers and the activities with the stickers that it contains.

My little one loves the book. Came on time and in good order. Nothing to complaint.

Good purchase

The blurb for this book says that ‘Progress with Oxford has been created with busy families in mind. Picture clues show your child how to do each activity, helping them work independently ….’ The last two words are in bold type. Forget that. Far from being able to leave your child to work through this book – or even a single page – on their own (whilst you get on with managing your Hedge Fund), you will need to provide close supervision. The book is designated for children aged 3-4; i.e. for children who can’t yet read. Left to themselves, ‘With a partner, take turns to challenge each other to find five things like five toy cars or five blue things’ will be a total mystery. Even, ‘Use play dough to make the number 0’ will need unwrapping for them. (You, the adult, will need to lay on some play dough too!) Those things being said, as you will already have gathered from the examples I quote, there are some good ideas here. Beginning at zero, not one, is, I think, unusual, and tricky. Not only does a picture of zero balloons look like a picture of ... erm … none of anything, but when speaking about the number zero, we rarely use that word. Try reading out loud a telephone number with some zeros in it. Or rewrite this paragraph as you would have written it if not taking care to use ‘zero’. Nought’ and ‘nothing’ will surely crop up, and in the telephone number the name of the letter ‘O’. Very confusing for a three to four year old! But that is where the book starts, and zero crops up again on later pages, so it will have to be faced. The book has 32 pages. By the time you finish page 30, your child will not only have learnt the numbers 0 to 10 but begun to do some quite sophisticated things (in number terms) such as cut a piece of toast first into two and then into four; and find the numbers variously expressed on page 31 pictorially, as words, and as Arabic numerals, that represent values of less than five. Phew! By the time you get to that point of triumph, you will have used up a whole double-spread of colourful stickers as teaching aids and rewards. One final word of caution – don’t take the ‘Age 3-4’ too seriously. Some children will be ready to attempt at least some of the exercises well before they are three; others may be slower in reaching that stage, but most certainly get there when they are ready. Similarly, working through the whole book could be a reasonably quick process for some children – especially those who start closer to four than three – for others it may be sufficient to look at one, two and three (skipping zero for the time being – it doesn’t rear its head again until the page for five), then wait some weeks or months before continuing further.