When young children are exposed to the Big Idea that the same collection can be sorted in different ways, they gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between sets and sorting, and the idea of a set becomes more flexible for them.
© Erikson Institute’s Early Math Collaborative. Reprinted from Big Ideas of Early Mathematics: What Teachers of Young Children Need to Know (2014), Pearson Education.
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Whether you have a machine at home or visit a laundromat, there is all kinds of math involved in doing laundry. And there are all kinds of ways that children of all ages can join in the thinking and doing.
Children look for ways to organize and make sense of their world through play at school and home, as well as at clean-up time. Sorting items into groups by specific attributes gives children the opportunity to define sets according to a rule of what does and does not belong together.
All members of a household have things in common and things that set them apart. Exploring the important ways that More →
A student organizes rocks into different groups based on their unique characteristics.
A kindergarten student organizes shape blocks by the various shapes of their faces.
A student organizes a collection of keys in different ways.
Sorting things into categories is one of the ways mathematics enters into our daily life. Talking about attributes and qualities such as size, shape, texture, and color encourages children to look more closely at things.