“Early math skills have the greatest predictive power, followed by reading and then attention skills,” reports a psychology squad led by Greg J. Duncan, in School readiness and later achievement, published in Developmental Psychology in 2007. Follow-up studies continue to confirm the importance of early math skills. The more math-oriented activities kids do before kindergarten, the better they’ll understand math in school. Early math skills foretell higher aptitude in high school math and higher rates of college enrollment.