Pre-school visit

On Tuesday I spent half a morning at the Seaview Pre-school in Cromer, on the North Norfolk coast. The main reason for the visit was to talk to Kate Oakley who runs the pre-school and who had some interesting observations to share on the ways in which children in the age range 3 to 5 years engage with mathematics. It was a delight to spend some time with the children as well. It was particularly intriguing and exciting to see how much mathematics they were doing informally through play within a suitably prepared and relaxed environment. The staff let the the younger children take their play in whatever direction they choose but then ensure that opportunities for learning arise by the provision of resources and by focussed conversations and questions.

Here's an example of one my observations. One 4-year-old girl was walking around on 'stilts' – standing on a couple of upturned buckets with strings that she could pull on to keep them in place under her feet. We were looking at the scale on the wall for measuring the children's height, and she hobbled over to join us. Standing against the wall on her 'stilts' she was able to talk about the fact that her height had increased. In this way she was getting an early experience of the key idea of 'increasing', which later on she will learnt to connect with counting on and the concept of addition.