shared practice and understandings about the children’s mathematical development.
When teachers and parents do share their understandings such as the parents
exploring their children’s schemas and mathematical interests, teachers, children
and families gain in understanding. ‘Parents can be effective only if professionals
take notice of what they say and how they express their needs and treat their con-
tributions as intrinsically important’ (Warnock Report, 1978, cited in Whalley, 1994,
p. 64). This, we believe, is true for the parents of all children.
Many schools send home reading books, but there is scant evidence of a collabo-
ration between parents and Early Years settings in terms of children’s early writing,
drawing or mathematical marks. We are certainly not arguing for an early emphasis
on formal drawing, reading, writing and mathematics. However, we do believe that
there is enormous potential in teachers and parents communicating about young
children’s early mark-making, meaning and development.
As Pahl suggests, ‘perhaps the current enthusiasm for reading to five year olds for
twenty minutes a night should be extended to encouraging twenty minutes of
making a den or biscuits or mud pies’ (Pahl, 1999a, p. 106). It is in such multi-modal
forms of representing meaning that the seeds of mathematics grow.Parents’ questions about children’s mathematical graphics
When do they start doing sums?
A: Although your child might not be writing sums in the traditional way, she is often
engaged in a variety of addition and subtraction problems. Much of the mathematics
we directly teach to 4- and 5-year-olds is through talking, games and problem-
solving. She is also given opportunities to write down her mathematics. Look in her
folder and you will see her mathematics. We are giving her opportunities to explore
her own ways of writing down her addition and subtraction, as well as showing her
the standard models and signs. Would you like me to talk through some of the math-
ematics she has done on paper?In my day we had to use squared paper – that really helped us get
it neat – why do you use blank paper?
A: Good question. We use blank paper so that children can make their own decisions
about layout. Sometimes children want to draw pictures, arrows or numbers. We
discuss with the children what they have written or drawn. Later we will introduce
a variety of jottings to help the children work out calculations with larger numbers.My son keeps on getting his numbers the wrong way round. We’ve
shown him the right way but he can’t remember – can you tell him?
A: We do talk about writing numerals and we practise this in a variety of ways. For
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