User – What do I do with this?

User – What do I do with this?

How do very young children pragmatically use and apply the purposes, structures and features of
early literacy and numeracy concepts through their play and everyday life experiences?

Children are constantly learning new ideas on an almost daily basis.  This applies to the ways in which books are written for children at various levels.  A child is then drawn to reading and looking at books which they can assimilate.  For this to occur, the texts must be appealing to them and for children, colourful illustrations and good-sized lettering helps the storyline to be understood.  Children learn to articulate sounds and words better, with much practise on the same phonics and sounds.  An educator or parent who is reading a story to children will often emulate the sounds and grimaces of the main characters of the storyline.  For example, in the story of  Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf,  an adult reader can use much emphasis to convey fear and terror, towards to the end of this story.  He/she can then indicate the immense amount of relief that Little Red Riding Hood experiences, when her grandmother is physically returned to her.  The tone of the adult reader's voice helps to set the scene for the different gamut of emotions that are or can be experienced in real-world situations.

Using a formal and sometimes informal tone of voice is a good indicator to children as to the seriousness or non-seriousness of a story or oral tale that is being told to them.  Oral stories are told to Aboriginal children as formal writing is not a part of Aboriginal culture.  These children learn the depth of intensity of stories that are related to them, by their story tellers.  Aboriginal people are skilled at drawing artwork and undoubtedly children learn much from these visual illustrations as taught to them by their educators and parents. All children are very quick learners and by occasionally reviewing formally seen or heard texts, either by books, oral stories or songs, dances, music, dancing and their own handwriting and drawings, children build on their already learned knowledge.  Their scaffolding of knowledge and education increases as they are further exposed to new experiences, books, stories, songs, dances, drama, and excursions and visits to new places. Children's literary skills grow as further new experiences are given to them, whilst at the same time they draw upon already learned and understanding texts of various kinds.

The same principles as above can be applied to numeracy skills and learning.  Constant repetition and gradual exposure to new sets of numbers, symbolic illustration of numbers on public transport vehicles, signage and counting skills acquired at an early age, become a scaffold of reaching towards higher numeracy skills.  An early educator or parent may have successfully taught children to wait till the number ten has been reached, before the child in front of them at a playground, has a turn at sliding down the slippery dip.  Likewise, children can learn to count the number of blocks or objects within their reach, by being exposed continually and un-obtrusively to numbers.  Blocks can be written with colourful, large numbers on them and as time goes by, the learning that children have received, then becomes second-nature to them.  As their learning increases naturally and considerably, also their confidence grows as they then become accustomed to absorbing further knowledge and skills at the level to which they are at.