ABSTRACT
Children use sensory and physical tools of enquiry to gather information from the environment. They include manipulation and motor skills and sensory, perceptual and attention skills. They all contribute to children's 'action thinking'. Usually, as childhood development progresses, these tools begin to include the communication skills that accelerate the social aspects of learning and thinking. The processes by which children use these tools are also the ways that they learn. The casual observer may call this 'play' without realising its importance. As children play, they choose, organise and use sensory information to do things. They cause effects and make things change, and as they remember their actions, ideas are formed. This is the everyday description of what psychologists describe as 'cognitive processes'. If the tools are being used for responding to changes and solving practical problems, they are being used to think in a realm of mathematical activity.
