Children\'s Mathematics

into children’s minds and is extremely mathematical. We have provided a back-

ground on mathematical schemas and are now going to focus on children’s mathe-

matical schematic mark-making on paper.

Figure 3.3 Sovay’s house plan.

The drawings collected in the Froebel study were analysed by looking at forms and

what the child said about the graphics. This is important because many studies of

young children’s drawings have not placed an emphasis on meaning. Some studies,

such as Kellog’s, looked at developmental sequences at the expense of what the child

Sovay, 4:3, is interested in containingand enclosure.We referred to Sovay’s interest

in containing/enclosure when she was 2 years old. Her drawings are to do with her

interest in inside. In this period of her life she drew a cluster of graphics which

seemed to move from the action of doing at 2 years to the representation of ideas

at 4 years. For example, one of her drawings was an ‘apple with the rotten bit’ and

she pointed out the rotten bit.

In another of her drawings she drew a truck and said ‘this is the oil in the

engine’ and again she pointed this out. Her attention to where the oil was inside

the engine, and the engine inside the truck, is her revisiting her earlier schema of

containing: now it had gone beyond the immediate action, to symbolic

representation of some of her containingideas. Figure 3.3 is an example of Sovay’s

engagement with her containingschema. At four years seven months she drew a

house for me. Her focus was on the inside of the house. She told me what each

room was in the house and I wrote what she said.

42 Children’s Mathematics

8657part 1b.qxd 04/07/2006 18:07 Page 42