Calendar Math in Preschool and Primary Classrooms: Questioning the Curriculum.

CALENDAR MATH IN PRESCHOOL AND PRIMARY CLASSROOMS: Questioning the Curriculum. Ethridge, E., & King, J., Early Childhood Education Journal, 2005, 32(5), 291-296. The main issue in this article is the question of using calendar math to teach skills that, according to David Elkind, Piaget, and others, are beyond the understanding of young children. The authors were excited to learn about "Calendar Math" in a "Math Their Way" workshop. After implementing it with fervor for six months, they discovered that their students' grasp of some basic skills, such as number recognition, counting, sorting, and patterning, was improving. "However, only a couple of students actually understood the concepts that dealt with time, such as yesterday, today, and tomorrow, months, and even the days of the week" (pp. 291-292). The students merely recited these concepts or answers without meaning. This result prompted the authors to study developmental theory in relation to calendar math.

Calendar math is part of most early childhood classrooms. Teachers' guides suggest that "calendar math helps teach the following skills: sorting, seriation, geometric figures, graphing, time numeral recognition, numeral printing, counting, patterning, observation skills, [and] place value" (p. 292). Teaching scripts are used to help teachers with scaffolding and prompting the students to achieve the correct answer. Most publishers use the same scripts for kindergarten through 3rd grade, because they know that young children struggle with many of the skills being taught through calendar math. Unfortunately, the scripts isolate skills, and the activities do not facilitate meaningful learning.

Ethridge and King use the developmental theories of Elkind and Piaget to further explain problems with calendar math. Piaget reported that children at the preoperational stage cannot understand intervals of time, only nominal and ordinal numbers. The authors also refer to Vygotsky in explaining their concerns about the premature introduction of calendar math. Vygotsky wondered if it might even be harmful to teach the measurement of time before children were developmentally capable of understanding it.

Still, differences of opinion remain within the field of early childhood education. In professional texts, whole chapters are devoted to the direct teaching of time through the use of calendar math. Other sources recommend teaching time in context. Practice and theory are conflicting. Teaching calendar math appears to be in direct conflict with what we know from developmental psychologists about children's development and understanding of time. Reviewed by Jennifer Bentley.