Mathematics

The Learning Carpet, a floor grid consisting of 100 squares, promotes kinesthetic learning of many important concepts in mathematics, as well as mapping skills and language activitie. It is used in all five program levels at St. Clement’s Early Learning School.

Mathematical learning at St. Clement’s Early Learning School includes games, activities and materials that provide a foundation for understanding mathematical concepts.

We incorporate math into our daily routine, as well as into other school related activities. For example:

• Attendance
• Calendar
• Weather Chart
• Number Line
• Creative Activities

Math includes:
Classification - This is a sorting operation requiring the ability to create groups of objects based on the identification of common characteristics. These characteristics include such features as colour, shape, size and thickness. The child must recognize similarities and differences in objects in order to classify them.

Serialization - This is an ordering operation requiring the ability to create logical sequence for a set of objects. Graduated sequence calls for the ability to order according to size and quantity. Repetitive sequence is mastered when the child can place things in order according to pattern.

Spatial Sense - This is the ability to recognize the relationships of “self-to-space” and “object-to-space”.

Number Concepts - The heading “Number Concepts” actually covers several operations. Some of them are one-to-one correspondence, conservation of number, measurement and time.

Other tools used to teach math to the children are time, age, addresses, phone numbers, cooking and measurement. As you can see, learning addition, subtraction, counting and shape recognition doesn’t have to be boring at all!