The trick with children that age is to take what they do know, in this case counting blocks in a square, and take it just one step further.
My wife used to teach kindergarten. The first grade teacher came up to her at the start of her second year and asked her how the class knew how to multiply. My wife, who is NOT a math person by any means, realized that multiplying is just the natural progression from "skip counting", which is a skill in every kindergarten standard.
The trick with children that age is to take what they do know, in this case counting blocks in a square, and take it just one step further.
My wife used to teach kindergarten. The first grade teacher came up to her at the start of her second year and asked her how the class knew how to multiply. My wife, who is NOT a math person by any means, realized that multiplying is just the natural progression from "skip counting", which is a skill in every kindergarten standard.