Swings + Roundabouts Autumn 2021

About the author Linda Ward is the owner and director of Reach Forward Early Learning Centres. She is also the director of Forward Professional Development. She has over 35 years’ experience in working in both the primary and the early childhood sectors. Her passion for mentoring new centre business owners and for training teachers shines through in all she does. Websites: www.reachforward.co.nz and www.forwardpd.co.nz Mathematicians and statisticians use symbols, graphs, and diagrams to help them find and communicate patterns and relationships, and they create models to represent both real-life and hypothetical situations. These situations are drawn from a wide range of social, cultural, scientific, technological, health, environmental, and economic contexts (p. 26).” As teachers we have a responsibility and obligation to enact the New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum, Te Whāriki, by providing learning opportunities for nurturing a child's mathematical interest, confidence and competence. It is important then that early childhood teachers have the ability and interest to recognise what constitutes 'quality' mathematical learning. In Te Whāriki, Mana Reo / Communication strand there is the learning outcome that says, “Over time and with guidance and encouragement, children become increasingly capable of recognising mathematical symbols and concepts and using them with enjoyment, meaning and purpose (p. 42).” It goes on to say that “These outcomes will be observed as learning in progress when, for example, children demonstrate familiarity with numbers and their uses by exploring and observing their use in activities that have meaning and purpose. When children demonstrate the ability to explore, enjoy and describe patterns and relationships related to quantity, number, measurement, shape and space. And when children demonstrate recognition that numbers can amuse, delight, comfort, illuminate, inform and excite we know learning is in progress (p. 42).” Once we as early childhood teachers begin to deepen our own understanding of what mathematics is, we can provide and support experiences that generate these learning outcomes, with infants, toddlers and young children in their daily routines, in their small group interactions and in their play. Mathematical language within play is the place to start. There is much joy found in exposing our infants, toddlers and young children to mathematical words and concepts: ● When we use the words ‘more’ and ‘less’, we are comparing things. ● When we use the words 'how much' and 'how many' we are numbering. ● When we are grouping, sorting and matching we are classifying and noticing if something is the same or different and counting. ● When we use the words ‘high’, ‘low’, ‘big’, ‘little’, ‘full’, ‘empty’ we are measuring. ● When we use the words ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ we are talking about mass. ● When we use the words ‘upside down’, ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘next to’, ‘between’, ‘over there’ we are talking about position and direction. ● When we use the words ‘straight’, ‘curved’ and ‘bent’ we are about shape. ● When we use the words ‘top’ and ‘edge’ we are about area. ● When we use the words ‘half here’ and ‘half there’ we are about fractions. ● When we are sharing, we are about division. ● When we say '1, 2, 3, 4, 5' we are about learning number names and order. When using number order to count, children learn that the last number you said tells them how many there are. It is key to remember that young children need to experience a lot of 'doing' and 'saying' before written numerals will make sense to them. Classification is a pre-number concept that children need lots of experimentation and communication with. As adults we classify on a regular basis without much consideration of what we are actually doing. We look in indexes that are alphabetised or numerically arranged, we purchase groceries in areas of food groups, we classify to sort laundry, and we sort cutlery before putting it away. Children benefit from a variety of classification activities which will support early numeracy concepts. As early as 2 years of age, many children will parrot the words 'one', 'two', 'three', 'four', 'five' etc. However, rarely do they understand that the number refers to an item or a set of items. At this stage, children do not have 'number conservation' or 'number correspondence'. But what a great start! Toddlers love imitating and copying all that we do. Capture the teachable moment such as when children tell us that they are 'bigger' than their sister or brother or 'taller' than the lamp or that they are 'higher' than the dishwasher. Young children will also think that they have 'more' in their cup simply because their cup is taller. Celebrate this type of mathematical language and concept and give guidance to help with any misconceptions as children experiment and play. You can teach infants, toddlers, and young children almost anything that is simple enough by just having fun with it. I repeat “As teachers let us be full of confidence and knowledge for creating a love for mathematics within all children”. March 2021 { 33 }