Kids who Count with finger have better chances in math !!

Aren't fingers useful? You can point with them, manipulate objects with them, and even create language with them. (Don't even get us started on opposable thumbs.) We may be able to add another finger perk to the roster: According to research, allowing kids to count with their fingers is critical to their overall understanding of math.

Despite the fact that using your fingers to count has historically been regarded as "not something the smart kids do" in classroom settings, recent neuroscience suggests otherwise. There is a specific region of the brain dedicated to finger perception and representation called the somatosensory finger area. A 2015 study published in Frontiers in Psychology showed that this area lights up when you're solving complex math problems—even when you aren't actually using your fingers to count. Essentially, we "see" a representation of our fingers in our brains when we're crunching numbers. The mathematical importance of finger perception could even point to why pianists and other musicians often display higher mathematical understanding.

Before you go all "Snakes on an Inclined Plane" on us: we're not suggesting that letting kids count with their fingers will lead to prodigious brainpower, but we are saying that they may benefit from it in the long run. Researchers found that when they trained 6-year-olds to have better "finger awareness"—which they test by having the children name which finger is being touched without looking—it not only improved the kids' current arithmetic knowledge, but it also predicted future mathematical success and higher scores in cognitive processing. That's A-OK by us!