Introduction
Birth to 2 years
According to Boubakri, (2018), human beings are capable of learning at any stage of life, from the onset of delivery. Children from 0-2years have cognitive development, which entails rapid progressive growth, which takes place within the child initial years. Most have to do with their cognition or thinking ability. The sense of competence which the babies come to the world with, enable them to have a strong foundation for future skill sets. The cognitive capabilities allow them to have a positive response to their caregivers (Lewis Presser et al., 2015). For instance, they are quick to hook the parents or caregiver into an intimate relationship with them. To ensure that those who keep them alive and feeding them, are connected to them. The skills responsible for this ability to recognize the caregiver has relation to the distance from the breast to the eye or face of the caregiver during suckling. The powers that enable them to define high contours and contrasts helps them to identify the outlines of objects such as faces. The orientation towards the voices of people from other sounds, and recognition of familiar voices by the time they are a week old. Infants are even able to identify the smell of their mother’s milk. From birth to two years, they are in the stage described by one famous researcher as the sensorimotor era. The scene starts with simple reflexes and advances to the complex motor and sensory skills, and they undergo series of steps in life (Bredekamp, 2016).
At this age, the relevant mathematics that children can explore are like, understanding the shapes of objects, patterns, and the sizes. Educators should make the mathematical ideas to seem real, through the use of symbols, pictures and other objects like cups or blocks. For instance, counting the family members before breakfast and giving them four cups, just to ensure that the child grasps some numbering ability (Boubakri, 2018). The parent can use the shape sorters while playing with children, talking to the child about shape by counting the sides and describing the color. The learning outcomes for the children under two years will entail learning times, like the time to eat, and nap time.
Children could be learning basics pattern like, the night follows the day, and finally children could master the events sequences by the time they are approaching two years. The pedagogy for teaching these children should be face to face responsive interactions, loving, sociable, and adults who are physically sensitive and attuned to the needs of the infants (Bredekamp, 2016). Calm and predictable environment, a strong partnership between the parents and other adult caregivers. For toddlers, the adults should be encouraging some of the cognitive and development of language skills among children; the approach should be more flexible with enough space which allows the children to try the thing out by themselves (Lewis Presser et al., 2015). The assessments for the child entails the physical growth and the health status of the child. The cognitive ability of the child, by asking the child to name different shapes, asking them their names, and the name of the parents, asking them to identify the people they are familiar with with their names (Boubakri, 2018).
2-3 years
At 2-3 years, the children can tell about the world around them; they are in a stage called thinking skills and intellectual development. The learning abilities of children increase rapidly. Hence, they learn new things quickly, and understanding concepts (Lewis Presser et al., 2015). Children can make sense of the current occurrence, they can solve issues or problem, and their memory use improves steadily. The toddlers start interpreting the meaning of the experiences they undergo and develop vivid imaginations (Boubakri, 2018). The mathematics concepts that they can explore at this stage, which helps them further improve their cognitive abilities are like: completing puzzles which have 3 to 4 pieces, recognition and naming of ordinary objects through pointing the pictures, identification of images like boy and girl. Beginning to count using numbers, learning the compass direction points since they have the ability of learning directions. Matching of objects and pictures one upon the other, understanding addition and subtraction by understanding that two halves make one whole (Bredekamp, 2016).
The learning outcome for children from 2-3 years is: children have a sense of safety, support and security; the educators and caregivers support this by responding to children signals and cues (Bredekamp, 2016). Returning to the attempts of children, to initiate any conversations and interactions. Caregivers should encourage children to develop attachment, by providing them with a warm daily relationship, which nurtures the children. Another outcome is the development of emerging autonomy, reliance, interdependence and the sense agency. Caregivers can support the children by giving them strategies for making decisions and behavior patterns. The last outcome is the development of the confident, knowledge and self-awareness.
The learning experience which supports these outcomes are: the caregiver and educators should acknowledge and understand that diverse children have different ways of drawing meaning from various objects (Boubakri, 2018). Promoting strong element of self-awareness in all the children and showing who they are, and connections they have with other individuals. One to one initiation of interaction among children by the caregivers, especially the toddlers and babies at routine activities (Bredekamp, 2016). The teaching pedagogies at this stage entails tasks for imagination improvements, individual awareness development, and language skills and pure mathematics such as counting using objects. The assessment of these children is by asking them to count from a specified range of numbers, naming objects shapes, identification of colors, and asking them to complete simple puzzles.
3-5 years
The 3-5 years of old is period associated with rapid growth as children can use the symbolic thoughts, master symbols, and language use together with pretense games. The memory capabilities enable them to solve problems and to reason effectively. At age 3 and above, children can acquire information, store them, and recall the experience or knowledge across time (Bredekamp, 2016). The mathematical approach for the children in 3-5 years of age entails making use of patterns, making a rule that enables them to create some models, pictures shapes, making shapes with objects. Puzzles, making different forms fit into the puzzles, construction through, finding shapes and making sure they fit into some balance. Measuring tools, enable the children to see how different scales tools operates (Boubakri, 2018). Caregivers should make use of robots, to help children learn about routes. At this stage, children learn better by taking part in activities. The measurable outcomes are like conceptual understanding; children have a conception of whole numbers, they can define what sets are without knowing how many numbers there are actually in two sets. They can count and recognize the numbers origins; they master how to compute a set of numbers. They can identify given names or numbers clearly (Kiss et al., 2017).
The learning experiences for children under five years mostly deal with interactions with real objects which enable them to relate with objects of study efficiently (Bredekamp, 2016). The children develop a more in-depth understanding of things by use of games and objects, the child can learn numbers by the use of objects like cookies, or oranges. The best way of ensuring that they learn effectively is through dramatization and pretend plays. Activities such as sorting of objects, beads, buttons help the improve learning.
Primary foundation year-Kindergarten
At the kindergarten years, children develop into pre-operational thinkers; they depend solely on the object to concrete appearance, and not on ideas. Their focus is on the single relationship at a time and only view things from one point of view. The children can tell what pretense is from what is real. Children develop boundless imaginations at the same time; they enjoy playing drama or pretend games. The mathematical approach should be an end to end measurement which entails laying of units from end to end, and there is no need for using objects of different length of size. Understanding several directional terms like up, down, front, over, back, above under and besides (Boubakri, 2018). Children will be able to comprehend the different concept of times like night, morning, afternoon and evening. They understand the concept of measurement. The children at these levels can get exposure to the pattern which they are familiar with and assist them to know how the world functions, an example is solving simple puzzles.
Making sense by observing patterns enable the children to improve their thinking capabilities. Children can learn about the sequence in a given model which allows them to recognize the order of successions of series in a presented pattern; children develop the sense of logic, order, and the reasons which help them in solving mathematical problems (Boubakri, 2018). Appropriate learning experiences are one to one interaction initiations of the teachers who enable them to learn much. The practical approach to learning by the use of objects, since children at this level understand visible items better than ideas. The assessment criterion should entail an understanding of the child capability through observation, focusing on the child’s abilities, and also asking the parents on how their childrens’ progress (Kiss et al., 2017).
Primary stage one, year one and two
At the central stage one, children cognitive skills are at the operational level in the development stages according to Piaget. Thinking of children evolves from egocentric and become aware of the external surroundings. They understand that thoughts and feelings of an individual are unique, may not be real and cannot be shared. However, most of the children at this level cannot demonstrate hypothetical or abstract thinking (Boubakri, 2018). The mathematical concept of these levels entail classifications like marching, sorting values, and attributes such as shapes, for examples squares, triangles, circles, and rectangles. Children natural interest revolves around classifications as they collect objects and keep them in play. Sizes like small, large, little and significant, the weight of objects, length width, and height. The outcome is the cognition ability of children to identify different shapes, colors, weight, and length and object sizes. Children are to discriminate between objects effectively (Kiss, Feldman, Sheldrick, and Carter, 2017).
Learning experiences entails provision of opportunities to children which enables them to explore and handle different objects, understanding their unique features and attributes like sizes, shapes, length, and positions (VanHoorn et al., 2014). Giving children opportunities of learning objects through matching them, and separating different objects by their attributes. Activities like using the magnet boards enable children to match shapes, orders, and sizes. The skills and abilities of these groups could be recorded through the use of observation of the powers, which children are manifesting and also, by asking a parent how children perform at home (Lewis Presser et al., 2015).
Conclusions
Children must have a good foundation in their early stages of development to have a prosperous future ahead regarding educations. For children to work and understand formal mathematics, they must comprehend concepts of mathematics effective; such ideas include conservations, classification, and order. These same mathematical concepts are introduced to children in different techniques depending on their age and stage.
References
Boubakri, F. (2018). From extra-linguistic pragmatic competence to more complex capabilities among children at an early age. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies (IJHCS) ISSN 2356-5926, 4(4), 11-31.
Bredekamp, S. (2016). Effective practices in early childhood education: Building a foundation. Boston: Pearson.
Kiss, I. G., Feldman, M. S., Sheldrick, R. C., & Carter, A. S. (2017). Developing autism screening criteria for the brief infant toddler social-emotional assessment (BITSEA). Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 47(5), 1269-1277.
Lewis Presser, A., Clements, M., Ginsburg, H., & Ertle, B. (2015). Big Math for Little Kids: The effectiveness of a preschool and kindergarten mathematics curriculum. Early education and development, 26(3), 399-426.
Phillips, D., Johnson, A., Weiland, C., & Hutchison, J. E. (2017). Public preschool in a more diverse America: Implications for next-generation evaluation research. Ann Arbor, MI: Poverty Solutions. Google Scholar.
VanHoorn, J., Nourot, P. M., Scales, B., & Alward, K. R. (2014). Play at the center of the curriculum. Pearson Higher Ed.
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