The Role of the Home Environment in Children’s Early Numeracy Development: A Canadian Perspective

Abstract

Experiences that children have at home can establish a foundation for numeracy learning, and serve as an important transition toward school entry. However, Canadian parents and other caregivers do not often have a good understanding of numeracy learning, they may not be prepared to provide appropriate activities, and some may avoid numeracy activities because of their own negative views of mathematics. Accordingly, when parents and caregivers do focus on academic preparation, they typically emphasise literacy over numeracy activities. In this paper, we describe how children’s home experiences support numeracy learning, in preparation for school. Our research has shown that young children who are involved frequently in numeracy activities in both formal and informal contexts are better prepared for numeracy learning in school than their peers who have fewer numeracy experiences. These results support the view that parents and other caregivers should be encouraged to take an active interest in children’s early learning, and to help children to make appropriate connections between intuitive understandings of numeracy concepts and the formal knowledge that is emphasised in school. Our work has also shown that parents can use their children’s personal interests to foster numeracy knowledge. In this chapter, we summarise our findings, present two extreme cases, and provide recommendations to show how caregivers can be involved in providing stimulating numeracy opportunities for children.