Topic 5 Page 5

Sentry Page Protection

Unit 2 Student Login

Unit 2 Student Login

Welcome, (First Name)!

Enter Member Area

My Profile Log Out

(Unit 2) Topic 5: Math for Young Children

2 Clock Hours of Early Childhood Education

Math for Infants

Topic 5 Page 5

Infants are constantly exposed to math in the spaces, interactions, and observations that they experience. Caregivers use mathematical phrasing all the time, often without even knowing it!

$Picture$

When a young infant is given a feeding, if he or she finishes the bottle and seems to want more, the caregiver may say “it looks like you want more!

You’re growing so fast. Last week you ate nearly half as much as you did today and you still act hungry!” Words such as more and half are common words in everyday conversation with young infants. These everyday interactions do help build upon very early math skills.

If a new caregiver is working with an infant for the first time, the infant may not be comfortable with them and may show their feelings by fussing or crying. This is a very common way that young infants express classifying and sorting skills. They identify that this new caregiver is different than the person they are familiar with and will communicate that. This is an important math concept that infants learn at a very young age.

According to Elizabeth Brannon PhD from Duke University, infants are born with the innate ability to understand simple arithmetic concepts such as more or less. Infants obviously do not possess the verbalization or cognitive skills to align these concepts with words or symbols, but are able to identify that a group of 20 cookies is more than a group of 10 just by a simple glimpse.

It is very important to support early math skills for infants.

Caregivers, teachers, parents, and support staff have a responsibility to work with infants in further developing basic math skills.

Some suggestions for supporting math for infants are:
Repetition
Sing songs, recite poems, read books, or play games using counting repetition. The more exposure to numbers and counting that infants receive, the more familiar and comfortable they may be with math concepts later in life.
Talk about it
Talk about the things that you see and experience and connect them to number sense. Infants will benefit from the social and mathematical concepts this way.
Explore
Explore math concepts such as shapes, patterns, colors and counting with infants from a very young age.
Point out
Point out the different shapes, colors, patterns, numbers and more that you see all around.
Ask questions
Ask the infant questions about math. Though they cannot answer them, you should communicate the answers and explanations to them.
Compare
Compare similar objects for infants to see. Hold up two different books, pointing out the similarities and differences.