• Learns number sense through measuring, counting, and comparing bigger and smaller.

• Uses large and small muscles.

• Gains knowledge of snack foods that are healthy, and healthy food helps them grow.

• Provides a group experience.
• Provides opportunity to follow directions.

• Develops sorting and comparing skills (e.g., more than, less than, and same).

• Uses gross control in lining up, moving around the room, and stopping.

• Learns to put toys away when finished.

• Learns to act out verbal and nonverbal communication.

[TOP]

Young children build the foundation for finding patterns and their relationships by exploring environments that are rich in shapes, sizes, colors, and textures. They learn to identify and describe patterns using mathematical language when there are opportunities to sort, classify, and label things in their environment. Children need hands-on activities to explore and describe patterns and relationships involving numbers, shapes, data, and graphs in problem-solving situations.

A CHILD CAN BE SUPPORTED BY AN ADULT WHO:

• Supplies a variety of materials for sorting and classifying: shells, keys, cereal, pebbles, bottle caps, nuts and bolts.
• Provides items such as plates or egg cartons for the child to use in grouping objects that are sorted by attributes.
• Encourages the child to create, identify, match, and describe patterns in objects, designs, pictures, movement activities, and recurring events.
• Helps child create and recognize patterns in his/her environment (e.g., room, clothing).
• Provides opportunities for the child to create own patterns for others to follow or extend using prompts and no-prompts.
• Encourages child to verbally describe why he/she sorted, classified, and ordered objects in a certain way.
• Uses words that describe attributes and criteria of items in the child’s environment.
• Builds on the child’s understanding of a series by making changes and additions in materials (e.g., varying the number of objects, types of characteristics, degree of variation).
• Helps the child recognize and describe sequences in nature, daily routines, and in stories.
• Assists child in identifying shapes in the environment.

Scenario
Recognizing and reproducing a simple pattern

Emma and her mother plant flowers in the spring. They have red and white petunias. Emma digs a little hole for a petunia and decides to plant the red petunia. She begins to pick up another red petunia, but her mother suggests the white goes next. After planting a white petunia, Emma sees the pattern and says, “Now we put a red one in. Red, white, red!”

A CHILD CAN BE SUPPORTED BY AN ADULT WHO:

• Encourages the child to explore materials and environment through movement and hands-on experiences.
• Enables the child to have a wide variety of gross motor movement in open spaces both indoors and outdoors (e.g., walking, crawling, skipping, hopping, jumping).
• Provides materials in a variety of shapes and sizes to create and represent shapes (e.g., paper, pipe cleaners, play dough, scissors, tape, wood).
• Provides a variety of geometric materials (e.g., unit blocks, parquetry blocks, stencils).
• Uses and encourages the child to use language and physical gestures to demonstrate directional words with people and things in the environment.
• Names and calls attention to shapes naturally apparent in the environment.
• Encourages child to create representations of shapes by constructing models through drawing, block building, or other mediums.
• Provides space and hands-on materials for creating landscapes (e.g., train tracks, houses, roadways).

Scenario
Recognizing geometric shapes and using directional words

A theme about shapes emerged at ABC Preschool. The children used play dough to roll out circle, square, and triangle shapes. Mrs. Jackson placed three boxes around the room, each labeled with a different shape. The children put their matching shapes in the box. After all the children placed their shapes in the boxes, Mrs. Jackson asked the children to put the shapes in and out, over and under, beside and behind, or above and below the boxes. Grace did not understand the concepts of above and below as explained by Mrs. Jackson. Mrs. Jackson showed Sue a picture card of a child putting a hat on the shelf above the coat in the closet. She also demonstrated putting the triangle above the box with the other triangles and then below the box.

The children also played a game to find “hidden” circles, squares, and triangles that are turned different ways or have odd shapes. The children drew circles, squares, and triangles with their fingers. They traced over them with their fingers and drew the shapes on paper. During snack time, the children cut their peanut butter sandwiches into different shapes with circle, triangle, and square cookie cutters.

During circle time, the children identified items in the room shaped like circles, squares, and triangles. Jim has a visual impairment. In order to help him identify shapes, Mrs. Jackson had stencils of circles, squares, and triangles available for him. She used glue to outline geometric shapes for tracing and coloring.

A CHILD CAN BE SUPPORTED BY AN ADULT WHO:

• Provides a variety of measuring tools and time-related instruments (e.g., rulers, measuring tapes, measuring cups and spoons, clocks, scales).
• Includes charts and posters with measurement language.
• Provides opportunities for the child to experiment with measuring (e.g., sand and water table, snack time, art projects).
• Introduces general concepts of time (e.g., yesterday, today, tomorrow; morning-afternoon-evening) before discussing specific concepts like hours and minutes.
• Talks about measurement concepts during every day activities (e.g., “It’s hot in here today.” “Your cup is almost full.” “Will this container be big enough to hold the blocks?”).
• Encourages the child to practice measuring with non-standard or arbitrary units of measure (e.g., hands, paper clips, blocks, feet).
• Talks about general concepts of time using clocks and calendars (e.g., mark off days on monthly calendars until child’s birthday).
• Talks about time and sequence during daily activities (e.g., wake-up, eat breakfast, brush teeth, get dressed).

Scenario
Making estimates and using measuring tools

It was a warm, sunny day outside. Mrs. Jones seized a teachable moment and took the children outside to talk about shadows. After they played and chased their shadows, Mrs. Jones called them together to talk about shadows and what causes them. The children discussed whose shadow was the longest shadow, shortest shadow, widest, etc. Carolina did not speak English very well, so Mrs. Jones made sure she used big gestures to demonstrate sizes of shadows. Mrs. Jones also helped her by pointing to objects, repeating phrases and names often. Mrs. Jones had taken a yardstick with her on the trip outside. She showed the children how to measure the shadows with this tool. She also showed them how to make their shadow look different.

On other occasions, Mrs. Jones can play the following games with the children that encourages the development of measurement concepts:

(1) “I am tall, I am small. Guess what I am now?”
(2) “If you have short hair, jump up and down. If you have long hair sit down.”
(3) “Children stand back to back and decide who is tallest/shortest, who has longest/shortest arms, and who has longest/shortest fingers.” Because Jimmy uses a wheel chair, Mrs. Jones only measures with body parts or ideas that enable him to participate fully along with the other children.

Scenario
Building concepts of measurement, noting changes, and sequences

A CHILD CAN BE SUPPORTED BY AN ADULT WHO:

• Provides opportunities to create and share groupings from a variety of materials.
• Provides collections which are already displayed.
• Provides opportunities to discuss the attributes of a collection using appropriate language.
• Represents data using symbols, graphs, and charts (e.g., the number of children wearing red).
• Uses graphs and charts to organize and interpret information and to show relationships (e.g., types of shoes that tie, buckle, or use Velcro).
• Encourages child to experiment with many different ways to solve problems.
• Provides computational tools where they would naturally be used (e.g., calculators near writing material and blocks, adding machines in the office).
• Models correct language when talking with child about quantity (e.g., part, pieces, whole, half, quarter).
• Provides a variety of shapes and materials that may be broken into parts and brought back together again (e.g., pizza, crackers, unit blocks, puzzles).
• Helps the child understand that many problems can be solved in more than one way.

Scenario
Resolving conflict through problem solving

Mrs. Jones’s class of 3 and 4 year olds were engaged in many activities around the room. Mrs. Jones circulated through the room observing and facilitating learning with the children. Sara was in the block corner building a house for her favorite doll. All of a sudden from the block corner came Sara’s loud voice, “Timmy stop that!” Timmy had knocked down Sara’s house. Mrs. Jones wandered over to the block corner to find Sara in tears. Timmy stood by looking at the damage that he had caused. While Sara’s tears were flowing she said to Timmy, “Why did you do that? I was building a house for my doll.” Timmy said, “I want those blocks to build a fire station for my big red truck.” Mrs. Jones facilitated conversation between Sara and Timmy on alternatives that Timmy could have used instead of knocking down the house. The three of them talked through this situation, and the two children came up with the solution of dividing the blocks between them in order that Sara could build her house and Timmy could also build his fire station. After the two had settled their differences, they sat down together and Sara built her house and Timmy a fire station for his fire truck. Note: Sara and Timmy came up with the solution to their problem. Mrs. Jones only facilitated their conversation by asking questions, not solving their problem.

Sometimes a child may need a physical prompt rather than verbal prompt to assist the child to enter discussion rather than acting out feelings with another child. For example, if Timmy continues to act out feelings rather than discuss a conflict, Mrs. Jones could establish a physical (concrete) reminder: Use of a foam ball could represent “use your own words” so when Mrs. Jones sees Timmy ready to use body language rather than words, she rolls the ball to Timmy as a reminder to use his own words. Foam balls are in the room so when Timmy is rolled one, the other children do not know Timmy is getting extra prompting.