Children\'s Mathematics

• Be aware that the dynamic form cannot be modelled as this is the child’s own and
  very spontaneous.


• Children represent their thinking in many ways, for example the iconic form is
  not just tallied lines. Children often represent their counting by using images
  (such as hearts, circles and people) and much else besides can represent items
  counted.


• Children will give ideas for the teacher to model that may be very different from
  the ways the teacher might choose to model.


• For the 3- and 4-year-olds in pre-school it is important for them to explore their
  own marks and they will have abundant ways of representing.

Although we recommend that adults indirectly model different ways of mathemati-

cal thinking within play, we do not want to inhibit children’s free expression and

this can be a very fine line. We are saying that when children come to put their

mathematical thinking on paper they will bring to the situation all their experiences

and they will select the ‘tools’ that help make meaning for them. The adults will

have encouraged their free exploration and also will have helped support new ideas

and thinking which the children may choose to use or reject.

The spontaneous dice game

This was a case study within the Cambridge Children’s Centres at The Colleges

Nursery, Cambridge (Lead Practitioner, Rosie Lesik).

THE MATHEMATICS counting

AGE 3- and 4-year-olds

spontaneous group

CONTEXT child-initiated play

FEATURES modelling mathematics

adult role in play

inclusion

Three children in the nursery had self-chosen to play with the large sponge dice and

were particularly interested in throwing it up in the air and watching it fall on the

floor. Some children were fixed on how many dots were showing when it landed.

One child took the clipboard and paper that were always available in most of the

areas and using the grid paper started to record the dots seen. The practitioner

encouraged this mark-making by joining in, taking a piece of paper and making dots

on it as the dice landed: in this case it was dots represented by dots. In each section

of the paper the child recorded what he had seen. Meanwhile other children joined

in and were enjoying throwing the dice and seeing where it landed and how many

dots there were. The attraction of the game was throwing the dice as high as it could

go. Children who were in a trajectory schema were also interested in the

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