Section A: Description of Two Young Children’s Mathematical Activity
Anus’s Spontaneous Mathematical Activity The polygon puzzle is the most popular activity in my kindergarten. The puzzles are made up of a set of strong and colorful shapes. Children enjoy using the puzzles to create different creative flat shapes and even three-dimensional shapes. The Early Year Learning Framework (EYLF) emphasizes the importance of children being able to resource their leaning through processed materials (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations for the Council of Australian Governments [DEEWR], 2009). When children are playing with the polygon puzzles, they are exploring and constructing the idea of geometry using their imagination and creativity. Anus is a boy who enjoys all kinds of hands-on activities. One …show more content…
He wrongly defined a pyramid as a large triangle and a cube as a square. This tells me that he can recognize some of the flat shapes but he does not understand the properties of them, which results in his confusion in understanding some the three-dimensional shapes. According to the van Hiele model of children’s developing level in geometry understanding, children at Level 0 define shapes by their appearances instead of their properties (Van de Walle et al., 2013). To provoke his thinking of the difference between a triangle and a pyramid, I asked him to observe the two shapes carefully. Through observation, he made a conclusion that a pyramid has more sides than a triangle. Van de Walle et al. (2013) suggested that children are able to identify the properties of shapes through careful observation on the appearances of shapes. This tells me that children at the early age have the ability to observe, discover and analysis the properties of shapes as long as sufficient appropriate guidance from teachers is
Anus’s Spontaneous Mathematical Activity The polygon puzzle is the most popular activity in my kindergarten. The puzzles are made up of a set of strong and colorful shapes. Children enjoy using the puzzles to create different creative flat shapes and even three-dimensional shapes. The Early Year Learning Framework (EYLF) emphasizes the importance of children being able to resource their leaning through processed materials (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations for the Council of Australian Governments [DEEWR], 2009). When children are playing with the polygon puzzles, they are exploring and constructing the idea of geometry using their imagination and creativity. Anus is a boy who enjoys all kinds of hands-on activities. One …show more content…
He wrongly defined a pyramid as a large triangle and a cube as a square. This tells me that he can recognize some of the flat shapes but he does not understand the properties of them, which results in his confusion in understanding some the three-dimensional shapes. According to the van Hiele model of children’s developing level in geometry understanding, children at Level 0 define shapes by their appearances instead of their properties (Van de Walle et al., 2013). To provoke his thinking of the difference between a triangle and a pyramid, I asked him to observe the two shapes carefully. Through observation, he made a conclusion that a pyramid has more sides than a triangle. Van de Walle et al. (2013) suggested that children are able to identify the properties of shapes through careful observation on the appearances of shapes. This tells me that children at the early age have the ability to observe, discover and analysis the properties of shapes as long as sufficient appropriate guidance from teachers is