Making the most of packing away: identifying mathematical opportunities for very young preverbal children

Abstract

Very young preverbal children (aged around 12 months) actively engage with their environment, whether at home, on outings, or in early learning centres. Their engagement with their environment can occur in many different ways involving physical and mental activities. In an early learning centre, there are many activities that very young preverbal children engage with on a daily basis. These activities may be fully child-initiated, fully educator-initiated, or somewhere in-between, but all will involve mathematics. It is important that the mathematics that these very young preverbal children might demonstrate in the actions undertaken during their activities are identified as it will provide the early childhood educator with an indication of the child’s mathematical understandings. Psychological research has demonstrated very young children engage in mathematical thinking, which leads to the question of how the mathematical thinking of very young preverbal children in a learning centre setting can be identified. This paper uses 360° video to explore how an everyday activity that would occur for very young preverbal children—packing away toys—could be used to identify the mathematical thinking the very young preverbal child may engage with by examining their actions. The identified mathematics is linked to research and documentation that outlines what mathematics very young preverbal children may understand. The importance of identifying the mathematics in the actions of very young children as part of the role of the early childhood educator is also considered.