Math in the Kindergarten
It’s hard for most people in our society to recognize how mathematical capacities can be developed without explicit instruction, and therefore, they have a difficult time feeling secure with the absence of academic teaching in the kindergarten years. We are strongly steeped in the notion that intellect stands superior to other capacities and that it must be acquired through explicit teaching.
Even parents who have chosen COFS for their kindergarten experience, might face doubt within themselves, or doubts expressed by other adults in their life. It is difficult to imagine something different than the norm can be equally, or even more, appropriate or effective. With this in mind, we would like to present to you a picture of what math can look like in a kindergarten class without being directly taught, and thus brought into balance with other, equally valuable capacities within the human being.
Math in Body & Movement
Have you ever considered what is essential for understanding mathematical concepts, even before specific skills such as counting, ordering, recognizing numbers, and beyond? At the core of it is recognition of a “whole.” Then, with the whole, there is movement. We have to understand that a whole can be separated, move forward, reverse direction, grow, reproduce, and so forth. To fundamentally understand these, we must experience them.
As a child under seven, our entire experience is “the whole.” Moving through the day, they begin subconsciously learning that they are a whole, and what is not part of “their whole”, that there are many “wholes” outside of themselves. They learn what it means to move in space and become aware of it as they move in space. Inadvertently, they are learning that any whole can move in space; again in forward motion, reverse directions, separated, and so forth. Their sense of the quality of numbers emerges, their sense of spatial awareness grows, their foundational understanding of the four processes arises. A whole in motion forwards is addition, in reverse it’s subtraction. A whole that is reproducing is multiplication, and one that separates into parts is division. This is just one example. As they move into lines through hallways, they experience order; as they move through a transition of washing dishes to putting on shoes and jackets, to going outdoors, they experience sequencing.
The activities of the young child primarily surround the growth of the physical body, where their life forces are centered upon until around the age of seven. Thus, through our entire kindergarten day, the focus is upon creating a nourishing environment for that developing body and bringing constant opportunity for movement with growing awareness
Math in Practical Life Activities and Play
The work of the kindergarten also includes acquiring specific mathematical skills through practical life activities and play. Some of these skills and the ways they are naturally learned include:
Counting: As we find out how many children are present at school or in a game, as we consider how many napkins and cups to place, we count together. In playing games such as “Mr. Wolf” or “Mother, May I?” children take a number of steps.
Sorting, ordering, sequencing, pattern recognition: Moving through the daily rhythm, seasonal festivals, or other predictable daily events. Telling repetitive stories, rhymes and singing repetitive songs. Putting toys away in their place, stacking toys, lining up cars or blocks, sorting laundry. Experimenting with patterns of beans or beads in crafts, tissue paper or coloring lines in a drawing.
Comparing: observing who or what is tall or short, what voice or footstep is quiet or loud, which ball of clay or slice of bread is small or large. Comparing sense impressions of smelling, tasting, touching, hearing, seeing, temperature.
Parts and wholes: Cutting bread slices, or chopping vegetables, grinding grain. Playing circle games with groups in and out of circles, on one side of a room or the other. Acting out stories.
Shape recognition: Experiencing the variety of shapes in the environment inside the classroom and outdoors. Molding shapes in clay, beeswax, sand, mud. Drawing shapes. Creating circles, spirals, moving in and out with contraction and expansion in circle games.
Symbols and number recognition: using three fingers to represent “I am three” years old, adding six candles to a pretend birthday cake, making a sign for play and asking how to write numbers or words. Equating the pictures of their symbols on their hooks, their drawers or chairs, the picture of their name or a word in a story book.
Concrete addition and subtraction: Sharing seashells as a friend wants to play, we give away two. Collecting acorns or pine cones or flowers, we add as we walk.
Problem solving: Constantly! Putting on shoes, tying shoes. Opening a drawer, moving a heavy object, moving something around obstacles. Building a playhouse and encountering a shortage of blocks. Sharing and figuring out how to have enough to go around.
These math concepts aren’t brought on to a piece of paper or computer screen yet, because in separating them from the child, the concepts become arbitrary. Yes, they can memorize facts and equations if we insist on it, but they will also miss out on a foundational experience that is crucial for true understanding of those facts. As they age, the same experience of math in the body and movement becomes far more challenging to obtain, and the opportunity for a deeper understanding can be lost. The skills that are developed through practical life and in play, are strongly imprinted and more readily built upon as the child moves into the grades and their life forces are now freed for developing new capacities.
