Number Line Skills and Home Numeracy Activities for Preschoolers in Center-Based and Family-Based Child Care

Abstract

To our knowledge, this study represents one of the first systematic comparisons of number line skills, other early academic skills, and home numeracy and literacy environments for children attending center-based child care compared with children attending family-based child care. Building on previous work relating home numeracy experiences, linguistic proficiency (including receptive language and phonological awareness), executive functioning, and early mathematics knowledge with number line performance, this study improves our understanding of the early development of number line skills and suggests skill-level differences on several measures for children in two different out-of-home care settings. Eighty-nine children (n = 42 girls), ages three-and-a-half to kindergarten entry participated in this study and were given a battery of assessments measuring number line skill, phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary, mathematics ability, and verbal working memory. Parents completed questionnaires on home numeracy and home literacy environments and parents and teachers completed assessments of child executive functioning. Fifty-five (62 %) of the children (n = 29 boys) were recruited from 3 state-licensed child care centers and 34 from eight state-licensed family child care programs. Our results demonstrate clear differences between children in center-based child care and children in family-based child care on number line skills, early mathematics skills, phonological awareness, verbal working memory, and executive functioning. A path model indicated the best predictors of number line skills included child care setting; home numeracy environment through early mathematics skills; and early mathematics skills through receptive language skills.