Abstract:

Teachers and even professionals are still searching the effects which take part in adopting mathematical ideas of pupils. One of the factors influencing school successfulness of pupils in mathematics is sufficient experience with so-called informal mathematics.
The aim of investigation was to find out in which extent the preschool education influences the development of pre-mathematical ideas of children, it means if children visiting the nursery school show better abilities and skills in the followed area (ability of comparison, classification, sorting, quantity and shape determination) in comparison with children who do not attend the nursery school.
The presented article represents the results of natural experiment in two parallel groups of children in age from 3 up to 4 years. The experimental group consisted from 24 children who attended nursery school regularly. The control group was formed from 12 children who could not be admitted to nursery school due to capacity reasons. We used non-standardised diagnostic materials for preschoolers as the research method. In the scheduled period was for all children registered positive shift in pre-mathematical ideas. However we can not say that children visiting the nursery school show better abilities and skills in pre-mathematical ideas in comparison with children who do not attend the nursery school.

Keywords:

Preschoolers, curriculum, early numeracy, parent involvement, home experiences, natural experiment, pre-mathematical ideas.