Abstract:

During the Early Childhood Education stage, the child develops logical-mathematical thinking based on the four basic skills and the development of the pre-numerical operations: classification (simple and crossed), seriation (qualitative and quantitative) and enumeration. These processes are essential for the acquisition of number sense, through counting and additive structure strategies, addition and subtraction, in order to develop other capacities such as problem solving, measurement, orientation and spatial organization and chance and information processing.

It is necessary for the student to have a good formation of logical-mathematical knowledge, to propose educational actions that contribute, in a significant way, to the development of representation and interpretation capacities: observe, experience, manipulate, play and verbalize. To initiate students in the construction of the most elementary mathematical concepts, number, geometry, magnitudes and measurements, it is essential to take into account the abstract nature of mathematical objects, which is why it is necessary to work on mathematical representation or symbolization, and hence the importance of the use of manipulative materials.

Within the types of materials that are used in the classrooms, in the Early Childhood Education stage, the so-called unstructured or non-specific ones, play a fundamental role. These materials have not been created with a didactic purpose and are rather daily use, but students can learn a lot when using them. Some of these materials are ropes, mirrors, plasticine, etc., and, as they are well-known by students, teachers can capture their attention better and are highly motivational.

This paper presents an experience proposal for a second-cycle Early Childhood Education classroom in which it is proposed the use of non-specific manipulative material, well known by children today, called "Pop-its”. Specifically, the material is proposed to work on addition and subtraction operations and the introduction of the geometric concept of axial symmetry. To do this, an active methodology is necessary in which the students are the protagonists of their learning, which is acquired through verbalization supported by the use of the material.

It is concluded that the Pop-its manipulative material may have great potential to promote mathematical logic development from an early age, not only for the concepts treated in this proposal, addition and subtraction and axial symmetry, but also to work on simpler ones such as quantitative seriation, enumeration or counting and other more advanced such as information processing.

Keywords:

Pop-its, Early Childhood, Mathematics, Manipulatives.