Writing numbers back to front

[MilestoneMum]

Are there any tips to teach my DD 4.9 to write her numbers the correct way round so 3 does not look like an E etc...?

She's still at nursery, starts Reception in September, so am not worried but just wondered if there were any clever tips (I recently read about the drum and drumstick for d and bat and ball for b and thought that is so smart!)

She started talking about some basic adding up and taking away (not sure where she picked this up from, nursery I guess) so I showed her some Mr Men workbooks and she is getting the answers right but writing the numbers backwards. I haven't been correcting her though as I don't want to put her off.

Hi MilestoneMum:

Both DDs had problems with this, but especially DD2.

Ultimately, we started making huge drawings of the numbers.

So I would draw a giant outline of 3 or 5 (the two numbers she always reversed) and I had her colour them in. Then I pushed the paper along the table from her (to the right of where she was sitting) and pointed out that the opening always faces her. (So if she were sitting next to a 3 (with the three on her right - she's right handed) - the opening would face her).

She didn't always get it at first, but gradually it seemed to help.

The other thing I reminded her is that in her class at school there's a clock on the wall so she can look up at it to check which way the numbers go.

HTH

I also told my ds to look at the numbers on the wall in the classroom to check.

FWIW my DC1 is almost at the end of Reception and still gets hers muddled. The teachers haven't mentioned it, I would guess it's quite common (especially with "3").

Perfect age group to be working on dot-to-dot process leaning......so, you make a dot pic of a 3 ...she joins them up.
Next pic is a 3 with only half the dots ....she joins them up.
Eventually, you get to just a dot at start and end points.
Works for all numbers, and helps train the brain to "see" the numbers the right way.

Worked for mine ...though I admit before a lot of the new teaching methods came into play!!

My 5 year old in recpetion does this, I think at this stage its more important that they are building a love of numbers and how maths works, I think constantly correcting could have a negative impact on this. they are still very young I wouldnt be worried at this stage, just have fun.

Very common DD still did it occasionally in year 2. Doesn't do it at all now she's in year 4. School just reminded her which round it went. It was 3 and 5 that she got the wrong way round. It's not going to affect Maths ability or at least it hadn't affected DD.

Dd2 did this in reception and the teacher said it's a very normal thing to do at this age. It will correct itself on its own.

It's extremely common for very young children to do this ... at this stage just keep reminding her

My DD1 was still doing this in year 1. I jokingly asked the teacher if she might be dyslexic and was shocked when the teacher didn't laugh it off. I worried for a while but she stopped doing it eventually and is now in year 6 and a very good writer

Have plenty of REAL objects available for simple numeracy work ; counters, Lego bricks, toy tea set so you can share biscuits amongst a certain number of teddies, Playdough (or real!) 'cake' to cut into halves, quarters, etc, ruler to measure size of books, squared paper to make patterns, 'washing line' and pegs to peg up number cards in sequence, count objects to create simple bar-charts (ie, traffic on a walk - cars, buses, vans, lorries, bikes; trees or birds on a walk in the park).

As others said, it's quite normal, but the CONCEPT of numbers, and how to manipulate them, is possibly more important than the graphical representation.

30 years ago our DS had letter and number 'sorting trays', so you fit the correct shapes into place, but I don't know if they still make such things! Aged 3 we gave him a solar powered cheap calculator; good for doing multiplication by 'repeated addition'.

Just make it all fun!