Books
In a math-rich early childhood classroom, children will have many opportunities to work with math stories and operations. This includes having children’s picture books that explore these different math stories. Before we ever introduce symbols to pull the mathematics out of the context, children need many experiences seeing that three friends and three more friends is six friends, or that three pencils and 3 markers make 6 things for writing. Picture books can be a great starting point for these explorations.
Copyright: Erikson Institute’s Early Math Collaborative. Reprinted from Big Ideas of Early Mathematics: What Teachers of Young Children Need to Know (2014), Pearson Education.
Big Ideas
● A quantity (whole) can be decomposed into equal or unequal parts; the parts can be composed to form the whole.
● Sets can be compared using the attribute of numerosity, and ordered by more than, less than, and equal to.
● Sets can be changed by adding items (joining) or by taking some away (separating).
