From the Cradle to Cardinality
Get dialed: Critical math foundations form between birth and 2 years old.
Infants learn through observation and informal methods that start even before a baby has left the womb. A preference for mom’s heartbeat rapidly expands into an awareness of all the things that aren’t mom. It’s easy to dismiss these early baby opinions, as just that, opinions, when in fact, these preferences will evolve into mathematical thinking by the time a child is 3.
Consider numeracy: The protracted process illustrated in the graphic below.
Counting skills begin at birth as babies develop a sense of attributes:
Attribute- noun: a quality or feature regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of someone or something. Synonyms: trait, characteristic, feature
Observing attributes is “part of the innate, implicit knowledge infants are born with” and is primarily developed through interactions with caregivers and the environment.1 Hello joint connection, my old friend.
What this looks like:
During the first year of life, a baby’s sense of attribute emerges as they develop their likes and dislikes and determine the difference between a bouncy chair and your loving arms.
In the second and third year of life, identifying attributes continues to develop along with language as toddlers begin to verbally express their experiences like ‘milk hot,’ ask for more Goldfish, or throw that last bit of food on the ground.
These observational skills then support a child on their path to numeracy. The awareness of objects as individual items supports the development of one-to-one-correspondence. Later, using attributes to form groups of objects, and in combination with one-to-one correspondence, cardinality is mastered.
A count list develops first, around the age of 2.
Don’t freak out but:
Parents’ cumulative number talk during interactions with their children between 14 and 30 months old predicted children’s cardinal number knowledge at 46 months old (Levine et al., 2010).2
But it’s a hard no on toddler tutoring:
These observational skills are high stakes, but should not be high stress.
Maximize your table time! Every cry for ‘more’ or head shake ‘no’ is a math moment. (Ohhh, you want less than the chicken I gave you? Let's count how many pieces are left.)
A child’s receptive language (understanding of what's said) is typically months ahead of their expressive language (what they can say). So it's absolutely not ridiculous to speak to your baby like this.
Personally, I have no clue where to draw the line with kid appropriate sentence structure. On Sunday, in the naptime struggle, I told my 15 month old “generally speaking, we don’t sit on windowsills.” Even I had to laugh, and luckily my husband didn’t hear it, or I’d still be hearing about it. There are worse things :)
This is huge though:
“Mix, Sandhofer, Moore, and Russell (2012) found that while reading a number book with 3-year-old children, 69% of parents’ spontaneous comments about the book involved number, whereas this was only about 3% of parents’ spontaneous comments for non-number books.”3
So put the best books in your routine:
It’s Not Just About Counting:
And while I’d love for you to share your favorite counting books and routines in the comments below,
Remember:
“Mathematics is in itself the language of logical reasoning and computational thinking; it is a process of thinking, sense making, and problem solving, and it is a tool for young children to think about, see, and understand the world in new ways.”4
And that’s a beautiful thing. 💚
Chen, J. Q., Hynes-Berry, M., Abel, B., Sims, C., & Ginet, L. (2017, May). Nurturing Mathematical Thinkers From Birth. Zero To Three, 23-33.
Eason, S. H., & Levine, S. C. (2017, May) Math Learning Begins At Home. Zero To Three, 35-43.
Chen, J. Q., Hynes-Berry, M., Abel, B., Sims, C., & Ginet, L. (2017, May). Nurturing Mathematical Thinkers From Birth. Zero To Three, 23-33.
Chen, J. Q., Hynes-Berry, M., Abel, B., Sims, C., & Ginet, L. (2017, May). Nurturing Mathematical Thinkers From Birth. Zero To Three, 23-33.
Thanks for this! I'll definitely share. I mainly teach ELA so I don't often post about math.
Also wanted to comment on where you draw the line with sentence structure and toddlers. I'm not an expert, but I would say from experience that as long as they understand you, feel free to speak at a level closer to normal. I did this with my kids and still find myself doing it when I'm with babies and toddlers. I talked to mine a lot when they were eating, like saying “Are you done?” when they started to toss food to the floor. At first they couldn't answer, so I just got them cleaned up. I think they soon learned that throwing food = no more mealtime. But before they were one year, they said, “Done.” Well, my first child actually said, ”Dunny dunny done!” 😁
Love these recommendations. Some other good ones: Ten, Nine, Eight by Molly Bang, Ten Tiny Babies by Karen Katz, Turtle Splash!: Countdown at the Pond by Cathryn Falwell -- I could go on!