Children\'s Mathematics

Nicola, 5:0, used the letters of her own name and zigzag lines on different areas of

the page. She then wrote the names ‘Mummy’ and ‘Nicola’ to stand for what she

wanted to say, gradually increasing her range of letters to include others. The strong

visual shapes of capital letters and their relationship to zigzags had impressed Nicola,

and she concentrated on using these. At this stage she also used some small circles

and squares to stand for letters. Occasionally Nicola used numerals to represent

‘writing’, repeating 1, 2 and 3 across the page.

Young children do not see the division between different marks of ‘writing’ and

‘mathematics’ and ‘drawing’, and often combine them on one page. This can be seen

in the example of the birthday card that Mhairi, 4:7, made for her daddy (Figure 4.2).

Using a Christmas card that she had received, Mhairi added her special message for her

Dad’s birthday. The smiling faces and the letter ‘t’ for her dad’s name Tom are appro-

priate symbols that she has met elsewhere and she has used balloons since she knows

these are important items for birthdays in her family. Finally she added ‘from Mhairi’.

Figure 4.2 Mhairi’s card

There is some wonderful software available for children to use but we have rarely

seen children in Early Years settings using a computer for their ownearly writing or

mathematics. I was teaching in a local class with 4- and 5-year-olds for a few days

and set up a noticeboard for their use. Robert, 4:8, was new at school and used this

as an opportunity to develop friendships (Figure 4.3). Several children subsequently

invited him to play, adding their names on ‘Post-it’ notes.

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