ABSTRACT
Most early childhood educators agree that number sense is a key mathematical concept taught and supported in early childhood classrooms. Mathematics is symbolic in nature and young children need to manipulate objects and create sets to truly understand the meaning behind operations. When children add more playdough to a rolled ball or add unit blocks lengthwise to create a road in the block area, they are manipulating overall quantities of a mass of playdough, or the overall length of a block road. Exploring and describing relationships amongst objects in physical space provides a child with foundational experiences for developing geometric concepts in addition to the ability to use descriptive language to describe relationships amongst objects. By exploring buildings over several weeks and using a variety of materials to construct their own buildings, children will gain confidence in their own use of mathematical language to describe buildings in detail, and to solve problems in creating buildings using mathematical thinking.
