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...Twenty-six 4-year-olds their mothers played with a variety of toys, including a cash register and play money, for 15 minutes. Three types of numeracy interactions were examined, including cultural, procedural, and mathematical exchanges. Results indicated that approximately one-half of the numeracy interactions related to mathematical concepts, one-third to cultural exchanges, and one-sixth to procedural information. The majority of parents provided conceptual information through implicit teaching rather than direct, didactic teaching of number skills during play. Parents initiated significantly more numeracy interactions than children, but the 4-year-olds initiated about one-fifth of the exchanges. The present study has implications for preschool and kindergarten programs, parent education, and home-school partnerships. Connections between the home and literacy development are often studied, but numeracy connections and home environments have been ignored. Teachers can capitalize on the opportunity to reinforce numeracy concepts being taught more formally at school by including informal, home-based play activities as well as structured number activities with parental involvement. Parents and children in this study demonstrated that numeracy-related interactions occur naturally in discourse during play, and that play is an important social context for guidance of numeracy development.
Introduction
In a free play session, a 4-year-old child and his mother are playing with a set of toys that include a cash register and a pretend credit card. Their dialogue illustrates several types of exchanges related to numeracy, or the development of knowledge about numbers:
Child: (looking at the cash register) What's this for?
Mother: (grabbing the credit card) I think that's where you scan this. It goes through there. It's where you put your credit card.
Child: (takes the card and tries to swipe it)
Mother: With the magnetic strip down. (takes the card and shows him the correct side) See, this thing is back. Usually you got to click that part through the reader.
Cash Register: "Two dollars and 50 cents" (aloud)
Mother: A bargain!
Child: Bargain?
Mother: Bargain.
Child: What's a bargain?
Mother: Inexpensive, doesn't cost much money. We love bargains.
Child: Bargain, yeah yeah yeah!
In this brief exchange, the mother explained procedural information such as how to use a pretend credit card. She also provided value-laden information about the worth of the goods, and, finally, offered cultural information to the child about the importance of spending little money in purchasing goods, with shared enthusiasm for the concept of a bargain. In their 15-minute play session, she never helped the child count the play money in the drawer. She did not focus on the fact that the cash register adds and counts, functioning as a real calculator. The majority of her numeracy-related interactions were focused on sharing cultural information about buying and selling goods and on procedural information related to the use of the toys for buying and selling; only a few comments were related to properties of mathematics such as comparison of size or quantity.
Another mother in the study interacted in a different manner with her preschooler during their play session with the same toys. In the following exchange, the mother and child had been looking at the play money.
Mother: Remember what these are called? These are what you always have to have to put into the bubble gum machine. What are those?
Child: (whispers) "Quarters."
Mother: Say it! Quarters. What are these? (Holds up dimes)--dimes. (They continue looking at the money together and talking about the coins; after a few minutes, they play with the cash register, and the child is learning to push the buttons to add.)
Mother: 3 (child pushes 3) plus (child pushes plus) 7 (child pushes 7) equals (child looks at button, then at mother) mmmhmm (child pushes equals).
Cash Register: $10 (aloud)
Mother: Because 7 and 3 equal 10.
Subsequently they went through a counting sequence on the machine but found the answer by counting on the child's fingers first. They spent the rest of the play session adding on the machine. In this dyad, the majority of numeracy interactions were related to mathematical properties such as recognition of money, recognition of number, quantity, and adding and counting. Despite differences in their focus, each mother provided her child with conceptual knowledge about numbers, within the social context of play.
Guided Participation and Parental Scaffolding
In Western middle-class families, parents often use play with young children as a context for teaching (e.g., Farver, 1993; Rogoff, 2003; Vandermaas-Peeler et al., 2002). Although parental teaching during play has been the focus of much research, little is known about the development of preschoolers' numeracy skills and concepts in the context of parent-child interactions during play.
The shared play vignettes illustrate several important aspects of a process known as guided participation (Rogoff, 1990; 2003), in which parents and children exchange culturally relevant information during informal interactions in ongoing activities in their daily routines. Parents and others with more expertise provide young children with important cues about both knowledge and behavior in social contexts. For example, one strategy, known as "building bridges," helps the child make connections between prior and new experiences (Neuman, 1997; Rogoff, 1990). The mother in the second dyad above "built bridges" when she reminded the child that quarters are the coins they usually put in bubble gum machines. Intersubjectivity, or shared engagement and goals, in the activity is...
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