Mathematical Skills in Early Childhood Education

 

According to Copley, early childhood is a significant period of successful school learning (58). Early childhood teachers believe that learning mathematics is a necessary activity. Children’s exposure to learning mathematics is an indication of success in later school learning activities. Young children can understand things better than adults because they are natural learners. Integrating mathematics into everyday routines enables young children to develop strong academic foundations from which they grow as learners. Introducing young children to learn mathematics at a pre-school age prepares them to become future scientists.

Ensuring that young children learn mathematics enables them to experiment, hypothesize, explore, and measure things. Learning mathematics prepares children to understand the reality surrounding the physical world and such experience continues to fascinate their interest to discover and learn things in their entire school learning period. The capability to enhance children’s language development is a vital strategy as this prepares them for success in their learning. Children attend the preschool setting when already having their knowledge regarding their own constructions about space, relationships, quantity, and the world. Children possess a natural desire to figure out, connect, and sense things of the world.

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The National Association for the Education of Young Child (NAEYC) recommends that parents, policymakers, educators, and other professionals need to promote children’s learning through developing continuous and thoughtful monitoring and evaluating children’s mathematical strategies, skills, and knowledge. NAEYC clearly defines the role of early childhood educators as professionals who are responsible for knowing what children understand, what programs to teach, and how children learn. Educators understand that language development plays a vital role in children’s learning. Copley says that language holds various meanings and implications for young children (59). Teachers have the responsibility of questing, observing, and monitoring children’s progress and offer the required support for children. Early childhood educators need to carry out continuous and thoughtful evaluation of mathematical understanding. The assessment involves developing provoking questions, focused observation, and documenting children’s work.

NAEYC encourages parents and teachers to understand the role that mathematics plays in children’s learning progress (Eisenhauer and Feikes 19). NAEYC continues to search for new opportunities to advance mathematical concepts in settings based on early childhood education. Learning using classroom materials and toys is a significant example of the math-making experience that children perform in their early childhood settings. Such a learning experience provides new knowledge into various approaches in which young children understand mathematics in their playful natural environment. Practical learning is a vital experience for students because it gives them a firsthand experience that makes them active learners. NAEYC encourages educators to use materials to help them connect their knowledge of mathematics into the way in which children learn and understand mathematics.

NAEYC recommends that developing and recognizing children’s experiences and knowledge are significant for the efficient mathematics education of early childhood learning. Young children possess different community, cultural, home, and linguistic experiences onto which to develop mathematics learning. To attain educational and equity efficiency, educators need to understand such social differences and commit themselves to develop new learning experiences. Copley claims that mathematics benefits learners to know important concepts by using different ways of understanding (63). Effective mathematics curriculum helps to build children’s learning skills and cognitive development. Children’s interests, competence, and confidence in mathematics learning improve when they connect their experiences with new realities facing them. Appropriate early childhood learning programs offer opportunities for learners to refine, quantify, reinvent, abstract, and represent ideas they learned intuitively or experimentally.