PreKorner™ Early Childhood Numeracy Resources

Much of what has been done with "number" in the homes and classrooms of the past misses the point. It is a holdover from the days when mathematics instructional sequences prepared by large curriculum producers were built on misinterpretation of the developmental research of Piaget and his colleagues. Rather than not bothering to do any serious number work that young children supposedly cannot do, at Designed Instruction we look toward what children can do. We analyze what children will be expected to learn in kindergarten and elementary school, design and chart learning trajectories that align multiple sets of standards expectations with relevant research, and backmap those expectations into the preschool years. The result? Realistic and developmentally appropriate approaches and teaching strategies for promoting early number understandings that prepare young children for their matheamtical world to come.

What is "numeracy" and how does early number concept influence a young child's readiness to learn math in the school-age years? Read about the types of preschool experiences that help children to form strong initial concepts of number and operations—a springboard for future learning. Find out about the precursors to later formal number understandings, and get a backmapped preschool learning trajectory that scaffolds instructional treatment of children's early conceptual development of number quantity and abilities to count and perform number operations. Go to the article Early Childhood Numeracy.

Counting—one of the most crucial indicators of a young child's future success in mathematics. And, teaching it is as easy as "one, two, three," right? Not really. Read our article Count With Me! for insights and strategies for teaching your child important counting skills that can add up to a solid foundation in true number concept understandings.

So, there is no way preschool age children can perform and understand basic whole number operations such as addition? Well, maybe not in the sense many are accustomed to thinking. However, the fundamental understandings and ways of thinking about problems involving operations should be, and can be, an important part of your early childhood education program. Read Add With Me! and then go to work seeing what your children can really do.

Read these brief research overviews on issues related to early childhood numeracy.

Research Précis Edition 04-1 Early Numeracy: Counting and Conservation discusses the distinctions between the classic notion of conservation and the relation of counting to that notion. Edition 04-2 Early Numeracy: Number and Language provides a detailed view of the research that ties language development to early numeracy and our efforts to build an early foundation in awareness and understanding of number attributes. The third selection, Research Précis Edition 04-3 Early Numeracy: Initial Cardinality, focuses on the findings that suggest that we humans may start to develop a sense of cardinality as mere infants. Interesting food for thought.

Work with your preschool through grade 2 children to improve their ability to understand mathematics through reading. Find out about some of the reading requirements on standardized state math tests they will face starting in grade 3 -- get the Exploratory Report It's Math! It's Reading! No, It's SuperTest! Use children's literature to explore two-dimensional shapes, develop spatial awareness, and learn measurement skills. Get the PreKorner™ Child Activity Series - Integrating Mathematics and Literacy (see below), or check out the free html sample.

Developmental research has contributed an enormous amount of useful knowledge to the field of education, and when united with cognitive research findings, as well as analyses of learner expectations presented in the standards, highly effective instructional designs begin to emerge. If you work with school age children, you will want to find out how these various opportunities blend to form a solid base for approaching early elementary teaching in measurement and number. If you only teach preschool, why not look ahead? See the LearningLeads™ K-12 curriculum and learning strand Measurement, Geometry, and Spatial Sense—it may inform what you do tomorrow with your children.

If this is your first time to visit the PreKorner™, or if it has been awhile, be sure to take a look at the PreKorner™ homepage while you are here. If you teach or are interested in K-12 teaching and learning, go to LearningLeads™ to browse similar resources.