At this stage, your child might have learnt to recognise numerals and numbers to hundred during the preschool years and now is ready to learn to count and represent numbers through drawing and using concrete materials such as counters. Your sweetie pie is 5 years old, and the focus for children in this age group is to manipulate and play with objects so that they can develop clear links between their own environment and the math concepts which they are learning. That means the goal is to focus on creating confidence in talking about numbers.
What you need to know
At this point, you will notice that your little one might begin to solve simple everyday problems using number symbols. For example, “If you had two blue balloons and two red balloons there would be 4 balloons all together which he could write 2+2=4.'' Children aged six may be able to count by 10s till 100. Or your kiddo might be counting to 30 and be able to represent numbers to 20. This means that he can link the number of objects to the numeral. It is a great way to understand that your little one is developing mathematical skills.
What you can do
However, your child might gets frustrated at times. Handle him with patience. Encourage your kiddo for grouping objects into sets and learning to count by ones to determine the size of each set. At the beginning, he may still be figuring out how to accurately determine the number of items but with time and practice he can work out sets (groups) of ten. He might also use ordinal numbers and identify which object is first, second, last and second last in a race or diagram.