Kindergarten children demonstrating numeracy concepts through drawings and explanations: Intentional teaching within play-based learning

Abstract

Using both child-guided and adult-guided learning, Intentional Teaching in the early years can be a powerful tool for enhancing young children's numeracy skills. As Epstein (2009) notes, this can include providing "opportunities for children to represent things by drawing, building and moving" (p. 47). This paper investigates how kindergarten (four-five year olds) children represented and demonstrated numeracy concepts through their drawings and explanations, completed for a research study that used arts-based strategies to enhance children's environmental understanding. This research study involved kindergarten children in Australia creating and exchanging postcards (drawings and explanations) of their local environments with their peers in Canada. Findings include that the kindergarten children, through creating postcards of their physical environments and explanations, demonstrated their growing understanding of numeracy concepts, such as spatial orientation, quantification and attributes of objects. The study argues for quality Intentional Teaching and the development of an 'early childhood numeracy progress monitoring framework' that maps and assesses children's mathematical development.