Progress with Oxford: Numbers Age 3-4 - Prepare for School with Essential Maths Skills

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

This lightweight book is jam-packed with everything your little one needs to get them started writing their numbers.There are tracing the number games, colouring activities (i.e. colour-in three sheep). Children are also encouraged to do their own role-play with numbers such as 'Have a picnic with 3 cuddly toys'. After each completed section , the child can choose a sticker. There are also sticker games to add some variation.This has been great for our 4-year-old who is soon to start school but our 2.5 year old is also really intrigued by the book and has been joining in with the sticker games.There's lot to work through, mostly with an adult. Overall I'm really impressed with the quality and varied content. Perfect for pre-schoolers.

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.

Designed specifically for pre-reception (those in the last part of nursery) this book is excellent. My son has only just turned 3 and we've spent a little time flicking through it and he can recognise the numbers 1-5. Can't be left to do it independently at this age as all he wants to do is eat it still but it's lovely choosing stickers to go int he right place etc. He likes the character throughout the book and can do the activities when I'm working with him even when I'm doing them for him he's still sitting with me looking through it. I'm not that fussed at his age about him doing some work like this it's just fun for him to join in the activities.

As a Parent and educator I have grown to really like the Progress with Oxford Collection and this is a good addition to that group exploring the concepts of grouping and counting objects and introducing mathematical language alongside opportunities to build on fine motor practice towards fluent writing. Dijit and Fijit help take the child through the learning conceptualising number as a written numeral, a word and counting what we find as we go alone.There are a few disappointments, first is that it starts with a zero which is confusing for the average child of this age group and not something i would start a counting book with for this age group. It's hard to conceptualise that these squiggles represent something more than a squiggle then you tell them this means 'absence of'! I would skip this page with a preschooler until they were more confident with the concept of numbers.The other disappointment is that this is probably one of the harder books for this age group and its not really accessible enough for the illiterate average 3-4 year old to be struggling though without employing considerable help.Don't be overly concerned with the 'working independently' though and don't be worried about recommended age grouping, there will be some 5-6 year olds who will still need to do this and find it hard and a 3 year old who whizzes through it easy, I would say check out a few of the books and use the ones most suited in awareness of your child's strengths and weaknesses (and attitude to the topic! A child that is comfortable with advanced number problems may struggle with their phonics or writing and vice versa, development is rarely perfectly symmetrical!) and choose across a selection of the range to suit rather than sticking doggedly to the age range on the cover.Otherwise this book is fab for intoducing and practicing number skills and is worth the cost and 5 stars even with my criticisms!