Explain distance and the size concept

Soon your little one will be on their way to school and there are certain milestones they have to reach during this for the development of the size concept.

They will be able to identify different sizes on 2D level and understand that objects appear smaller the further away they are from you. Do the following activities with your child to prepare them for primary school.

Give your child a variety of buttons of different sizes. Let them arrange it from small to large and vice versa. Increase the number of buttons to make the game a bit more difficult or take some buttons away if you see your little one is struggle to complete the task.

Explain to them that objects appear smaller and smaller as they move further away from us. A bird is a good example. As it flies away from us, it appears smaller, but it isn’t actually getting smaller. When it flies closer to us again, it appears to get bigger, but that isn’t the case. 

Draw several circles of two different sizes on a piece of paper. Now ask your little one to colour in the smaller circles with a blue pencil and the bigger circles with a red pencil. Once they get the hang of this, you can add more circles in two more sizes and ask them to colour these in with green and yellow. 

Give your child a variety of items, like sticks, pieces of string, ice cream sticks or ribbons, of different lengths. Let them arrange these according to length. Now do the same with objects of a different thickness, like blocks.

Remember that your child is developing at their own pace and might still need your help. Guide them as needed, but try to be patient and don’t take over when they are trying to figure something out.

Click here for more on how to develop the shape concept.