Math activities for young children

Children use mathematical terminology throughout their daily play. While observing a group of children during play, one is likely to hear comments such as: He has more, These are my numbers, Jane has the biggest half, I'm bigger than you 'cause I'm five years old, Give me the round one, I gave each child one cupcake, and so on.Diane M. Kohl is Assistant Professor of Child and Family Development, The University of Georgia.     

Science activities for young children

Science for young children, and older ones as well, should be a blend of development of science content, science processes, and positive attitudes toward science. When educators stress development and learning in these three interrelated and complementary areas, children learn how to explore science as they develop skill in using science processes such as observing, communicating, predicting, and inferring.Jean Shaw is Associate Professor of Elementary Education at the University of Mississippi. Sally Blake teaches at Kentucky Wesleyan College. The late Mary Jo Cliatt taught at the University of Mississippi.     

The emergence of social cognition in three young chimpanzees

We report a series of 10 studies on the social-cognitive abilities of three young chimpanzees. The studies were all ones previously conducted with human infants. The chimpanzees were 1-5 years of age, had been raised mostly by humans, and were tested mostly directly by a familiar human experimenter. First, in a longitudinal investigation with repeated measurements from a social-cognitive test battery, the three young chimpanzees were similar in many ways to human infants; the major difference was a total lack of attempts to share attention with others either in joint attentional interactions or through declarative gestures. Second, in imitation-based tests of the understanding of intentional action, the chimpanzees, like human infants, showed an understanding of failed attempts and accidents; but they did not pay attention to the behavioral style of the actor or the actor's reasons for choosing a particular behavioral means. Third, in tests of their understanding of visual perception, the chimpanzees followed the gaze direction of a human to an out-of-sight location behind a barrier and gestured more to a human who could see them than to one who could not; but they showed no understanding that perceivers can focus their attention on one thing, or one aspect of a thing, within their perceptual fields for a reason. Finally, in tests of joint intentions and joint attention, the chimpanzees showed no ability to either reverse roles with a partner in a collaborative interaction or to set up a joint attentional framework for understanding the communicative intentions behind a pointing gesture. Taken together, these findings support the idea that the early ontogeny of human social cognition comprises two distinct trajectories, each with its own evolutionary history: one for understanding the basics of goal-directed action and perception, common to all apes, and another for sharing psychological states with others in collaborative acts involving joint intentions and attention, unique to the human species.     

Early childhood special education pictorial literacy activities for young children with disabilities

Summary Alternative literacy activities can be adapted to complement the speech and language programs that have been developed to assist learners with disabilities. Pictorially based alternative literacy programs may involve rebus symbols, augmentative and alternative communication devices, or picture reading. Because these programs do not assume extensive language development, they can be appropriate for children with severe learning problems as a foundation or replacement for typical early reading activities.     

Self-evaluation in young children.

A series of studies was conducted to examine the development of self-evaluation in children aged 1-5 years. Developmental changes in children's reactions to achievement-related outcomes were assessed in a variety of contexts, using different tasks and different criteria for success. The first study of 1-3-year-olds revealed an increased social orientation after the age of 21 months. Only children over this age were more likely to look up at the experimenter after they had produced an outcome themselves than after the same outcome had been produced by the experimenter. These older children were also more likely than younger children to call their mothers' attention to their achievements in a free-play situation. In a second study, on a task with visibly salient success versus failure outcomes, children aged 2-5 years responded to success with positive affect (e.g., smiling) and to failure with avoidance reactions (e.g., looking away from the experimenter). Praise enhanced children's positive affective reactions to success, but its effect was modest. In the final study, winning or losing on a competitive task was not understood by children below age 33 months and had no effect on their affective reactions to the task. In contrast, winning enhanced older children's pleasure in completing the task. Three stages are proposed in the development of self-evaluation. In the first stage, children experience joy in causality, but they lack the cognitive representational skills required for self-evaluation in a self-reflective sense, and they do not anticipate others' reactions to their performance. In the second stage, beginning before the age of 2 years, children anticipate adult reactions, seeking positive reactions to their successes and endeavoring to avoid negative reactions to failure. The proposed third stage involves a gradual internalization of external reactions, with children beginning to evaluate their performance and react emotionally to success and failure independently of their expectations of adult reactions. Although all studies focused on achievement outcomes, the development of self-evaluation in the moral domain may parallel this developmental sequence proposed for the achievement domain. It is also proposed that caretakers' reactions to rule violations might engender concerns about meeting adult expectations in achievement contexts.     

Reading and young gifted children

The authors analyze issues such as appropriate programming, identification, and instructional approaches for teaching reading to young gifted children.     

Spatial concepts and young children

This presentation looks at how young children learn basic geometrical concepts. Piaget's developmental levels will be examined to determine how they fit into the current research project. These will be compared with materials from the Soviet States that have recently become available from the NCTP in the USA.

The research project was constructed in a number of early childhood centres in a variety of socio‐economic areas. All of these centres had an early intervention program in operation so that special needs or ‘exceptional’ children could be observed along with mainstream children.

The researcher is investigating children's learning styles to determine the children's preferred learning styles when exploring spatial concepts. The question of whether exceptional children progress through the same stages and in the same order as the mainstream children is also being considered.

Spatial concepts in early childhood is an area that seems to have been neglected by researchers in favour of the development of number concepts. This research project aims to add to our knowledge of how young children learn spatial concepts.

     

Numerical competence in young children and in children with mathematics learning disabilities

A longitudinal study was conducted on 82 children to investigate, firstly the numerical competence of young children and the predictive value of (pre)-numerical tests in kindergarten, and, secondly, whether children's knowledge of the numerical system and representation of the number size is related to their computation and logical knowledge and to their counting skills. In an additional cross-sectional study on 30 children with a clinical diagnosis of mathematical learning disability (MLD) of 8,5 years, age- and ability-matched with 2 × 30 children the same parameters of numerical competence were assessed. The longitudinal data showed individual differences in numerosity, as well as the relationship between a delay in arithmetics in grade l and problems on numerosity in kindergarten. In the cross-sectional results some evidence was found for the independence of numerical abilities in MLD-children. About 13% of them had still severe pre-numerical processing deficits (in number sequence production, cardinality skills and logical knowledge) in grade 3. About 67% had severe difficulties in executing calculation procedures and a lack of conceptual knowledge. A feature of 87% of the MLD-children was severe translation deficits, with a significantly worse knowledge of number words compared with the knowledge of Arab numerals. Finally a severe deficit in subitizing was found to be present in 33% of the MLD children. On a group level the processing deficits were linked to understanding numerosity, since the ability-matched younger children and the MLD-children had the same pre-numerical and numerical profile. Implications for the assessment of mathematical disabilities and the value of TEDI-MATH® as an instrument in this process are discussed.     

Mechanism-based causal reasoning in young children

The hypothesis that children develop an understanding of causal mechanisms was tested across 3 experiments. In Experiment 1 (N = 48), preschoolers had to choose as efficacious either a cause that had worked in the past, but was now disconnected from its effect, or a cause that had failed to work previously, but was now connected. Four-year-olds chose the now-connected cause more often than 3-year-olds. Experiment 2 (N = 16) showed 4-year-olds responded appropriately to an irrelevant modification in the same causal system. Experiment 3 (N = 24) demonstrated when the mechanism was batteries rather than connection, 3-year-olds could properly distinguish between relevant and irrelevant modifications. Together, these data suggest that understanding of specific causal mechanisms develops at different ages.     

Software for young children

Due to the pervasive nature of computers in all areas of our society, it comes as no surprise that they are creeping into the world of preschoolers. The issue is no longer whether or not it is appropriate to use computers with very young children, but rather how they can be used effectively with them.Janet Fowle McLanahan is an Associate Professor and Chair of Early Childhood Education at North Shore Community College in Beverly, MA.     

Educating homeless young children

Desiree, a four-year-old homeless child, spent the night in a subway station and has been in three different emergency shelters during the last nine months. Despite her transient life, she has missed only 10 days of her Head Start program during the school year.Sally Koblinsky is Professor, Family and Community Development, University of Maryland. Martha Taylor is Associate Professor, Food, Nutrition and Food Service Management, University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Stacey Relkin is Staff Assistant, House of Representatives Democratic Caucus.     

Assessing individual differences in young children

Cognitive styles characterize individuals' personalities as well as their social and cognitive functioning. An assessment of cognitive styles provides an appraisal which extends the assessment of mental performance beyond the levelsof achievement to patterns of cognitive functioning and thus can present another dimension of individual differences in children as the basis for planning and evaluating early childhood programs.     

Mathematical problem solving and young children

Educators of young children can enhance the development of a problem-solving thought process through daily activities in their classrooms. An emphasis should be placed on the actual thought process needed to solve problems that occur in everyday living. Educators can follow simple suggestions to create problem-solving situations for all ages of children. The process of thinking through a problem and finding a solution is more important than traditional mathematics counting and memorizing useless facts. Even very young children are capable of a problem-solving process that is on the appropriate developmental level. The problem-solving process is constructivist in nature, as each individual perceives problems according to her or his background and developmental levels. Educators need to make a conscious effort to capitalize on all stages of problem-solving thinking to enhance future mathematical development.