ABSTRACT
Reading for information in the early years will not be directed towards the accumulation of knowledge as such, but to widening concepts about the environment, and towards ways of thinking which will include observation, hypothesising, comparison and classification…
(Helen Arnold, 1996:65)
If we have a light touch, we can help children learn about number, colour and other concepts from their very early non-fiction books. But we may create anxiety if the books are used too much like teaching aids. Up to about three, children’s encounters with books should be enjoyable for their own sake. This does not mean, of course, that we cannot have many helpful conversations around the texts so that children move forward in their understanding. There are number and concept books in board and cloth form for the under-threes, and in paper form they are amongst the earliest kinds of non-narrative text used in nursery school and reception classes. However, some are in narrative form and, as we will see in case study 4.1, a story can be an excellent way of drawing young children into the world of mathematics, helping them make ‘human sense’ of numbers.
