Lesson 5

Early Childhood Geometry

In the previous lesson, you had a background on numbers and operations. In this lesson, you
will learn in Toto the essential concepts in numeracy development which is geometry.

● How important is geometry in the numeracy development of learners?

GEOMETRY
● Geometry, measurement, and spatial reasoning are important, inherently, because
they involve "grasping ... that space in which the child lives, breathes and moves ...
that space that the child must learn to know, explore, conquer, in order to live,
breathe and move better in it"
● In addition, geometry learning in the early years can be particularly meaningful
because it can be consistent with young children's way of moving their bodies
(Papert, 1980). Especially for early childhood, geometry and spatial reasoning form
the foundation of much learning of mathematics and other subjects (Clements, chap.
10, this volume).
● Although our knowledge of young children's geometric and spatial thinking is not as
extensive as their numerical thinking, it has grown substantially and can be used as
one basis for curriculum development and teaching.
This early knowledge can be supported by experiences in homes, day-care settings, and
prekindergartens so that all children build a strong foundation of geometric and spatial thinking.

Along Shapes..

● Through their everyday activity, children build both intuitive and explicit knowledge of
geometric figures. Indeed, children often know as much about shapes entering school as
their geometry curriculum "teaches" them in the early grades (Clements, chap. 10, this
volume; Lehrer, Osana, Jacobson, & Jenkins, 1993). For example, most children can
recognize and name basic two-dimensional (2-D) shapes at 4 years of age, and they do
increase their knowledge significantly throughout elementary school (Clements, chap.
10, this volume).
● However, young children can learn richer concepts about shape if their educational
nvironment includes four features: varied examples and nonexamples, discussions about
shapes and their characteristics, a wider variety of shape classes, and interesting tasks.
● First, curricula and teaching should ensure that children experience many different
examples of a type of shape, so that they do not form narrow ideas about any class of
shapes. Showing no examples and comparing them to similar examples help focus
children's attention on the critical attributes of shapes and prompts discussion. For
example, they might compare a chevron or kite (O) to a triangle .
● Second, these discussions should encourage children's descriptions while encouraging
the development of language. Children can learn to explain why a shape belongs to a
 certain category—"It has three straight sides" or does not belong ( The sides aren't
straight!"). Eventually, they can internalize such arguments; for example, saying about,
-i"It is a weird, long triangle, but it has three straight sides!"
● Third, curricula and teachers should include a wide variety of shape classes. Early
childhood curricula traditionally introduce shapes in four basic-level categories: circle,
square, triangle, and rectangle.
● The unfortunate notion that a square is not a rectangle is rooted by age 5 (Clements et
al., 1999; Hannibal & Clements, 2000). Instead, children should encounter many
examples of squares and rectangles, varying orientation, size, and so forth, including
squares as examples of rectangles. If children say "that's a square," teachers might
respond that it is a square, which is a special type of rectangle, and they might try
double-naming ("it's a square-rectangle").
● Older children can discuss "general" categories, such as quadrilaterals and triangles,
counting the sides of various figures to choose their category. Also, teachers might
encourage them to describe why a figure belongs or does not belong to a shape
category. Then, teachers can say that because a triangle has all equal sides, it is a special
type of triangle, called an equilateral triangle.
● Further, children should experiment with and describe a wider variety of shapes,
including but not limited to semicircles, quadrilaterals, trapezoids , rhombi, and
hexagons. In summary, children can and should discuss shapes and the parts and
attributes of shapes. This brings us again to our fourth feature of a high-quality early
childhood geometry environment—interesting tasks.
● Activities that promote reflection and discussion include building models of shapes from
components. For example, children might build representations of squares and other
polygons with toothpicks and marshmallows. They might also form shapes with their
bodies, either singly or with their friends.
● To understand angles, they must discriminate angles as critical parts of geometric
figures, and construct and mentally represent the idea of turns. Children possess
intuitive knowledge of turns and angles and 5-year-olds can match angles in
correspondence tasks (Beilin, Klein, & Whitehurst, 1982). The long developmental
process of learning about turns and angles is best begun in the early and elementary
classrooms, as children deal with corners of figures, comparing angle size, and turns.
● Computer-based shape manipulation and navigation environments can help
mathematize these experiences.
● Especially important is understanding how turning one's body relates to turning shapes
and turning along paths in navigation and learning to use numbers to quantify these turn
and angle situations.For example, even 4-year-olds learn to click on a shape to turn it
and say, "I need to turn it three times!". Concepts of 2-D shapes begin forming in the
prekindergarten years and stabilize as early as age 6 (Gagatsis & Patronis, 1990; Hannibal
& Clements, 2000). It is therefore critical that children be provided better opportunities
to learn about geometric figures between 3 and 6 years of age.
● Curricula should develop early ideas aggressively, so that by the end of Grade 2 children
can identify a wide range of examples and nonexamples of a wide range of geometric
figures; classify, describe, draw, and visualize shapes; and describe and compare shapes
based on their attributes.
Transformations and Symmetry.

● Pre-K-K, and even Grade 1-2 children, may be limited in their ability to mentally
transform shapes, but there is evidence that they can do so in solving simple problems.
Furthermore, they can learn to perform rotations on objects (physical or virtual), and a
rich curriculum or set of experiences, enhanced by such manipulatives and computer
tools, may reveal that such knowledge and mental processes are valid educational goals
for most young children.
● Beginning as early as 4 years of age, children can create and use strategies, such as
moving shapes to compare their parts or to place one on top of the other, for judging
whether two figures are "the same shape." In the Pre-K to Grade 2 range, they can
develop sophisticated and accurate mathematical procedures for determining
congruence.
● Older prekindergartners can learn to compare common geometric shapes that have
undergone a transformation such as rotation or flip (Beilin et al., 1982).
● Children as young as 5-6 years can identify similar (scaled) shapes in certain situations
and use computers to create similar shapes. First and second graders can identify similar
shapes and use scaling transformations to check their predictions.
● Symmetry is also an area of strength. Very young children create designs with both line
and rotational ( symmetry with manipulatives and in art. Children in Grades K-2 can
learn to draw the other half of a geometric figure to create a symmetric figure and
identify lines of symmetry.

Visualization and Spatial Reasoning.

● One aspect of spatial reasoning, spatial orientation, involves knowing the shape of one's
environment. This knowledge is intrinsically connected to knowledge of locations and
directions and so is discussed in the following subsection.
● Another aspect of spatial reasoning is spatial visualization: the ability to create a mental
image of geometric objects, "examine" it mentally to answer questions about it, and
transform it. Prekindergarten children can generate and inspect images, especially if
they are provided opportunities to develop this ability ("Think of a square. What do you
see?). They can also learn to transform them in certain ways ("Think of a square cut
down the middle. What do you have?").
● Even prekindergarten and kindergarten children show initial abilities to slide, turn, and
flip shapes mentally in certain settings, as previously discussed. All children should work
on developing their ability to create, maintain, and represent mental images of
geometric shapes and of the environments in which they live.
● Locations, Directions, and Coordinates. Infants and toddlers spend a great deal of time
exploring space and learning about the properties and relations of objects in space. In
the first year of life, infants can perceive the shape and size of objects and can represent
the location of objects in a 3-D space (Haith & Benson, 1998; Kellman & Banks, 1998).
Infants can use landmarks to keep track of locations in their environment (Acredolo &
 Evans, 1980) and associate objects as being near a person such as a parent (Presson &
Somerville, 1985).
● Toddlers and 3-year-olds can place objects in specified locations near distant landmarks,
but "lose" locations that are not specified ahead of time once they move. They may be
able to form simple frameworks, such as the shape of the arrangement of several
objects, which has to include their own location (Huttenlocher & Newcombe, 1984).
Thus, very young children know and use the shape of their environment in navigation
activities. With guidance, they can learn to mathematize this knowledge.
● They can learn about direction, perspective, distance, symbolization, location, and
coordinates. Some studies have identified first grade as a good time to introduce
learning of simple maps, such as maps of objects in the classroom or routes around the
school or playground, but informal experiences in prekindergarten and kindergarten are
also beneficial, especially those that emphasize building imagery from physical
movement.
● As stated previously, curriculum developers, educators conducting professional
development, and teachers need different levels of detail for each mathematical topic,
from the biggest ideas to detailed learning trajectories. The four caveats described
previously are critical—tables inadequately reflect qualitatively different ways of
thinking, details about learning are not included, children may work beyond those goals,
and competencies in these tables are not directions for curriculum or teaching. To
emphasize the second caveat, tables and figures do not adequately describe the
qualitatively different ways of thinking and learning about geometry and space that
young children develop through the early years.