Exploring Unit Block Relationships (Early Math Collaborative)

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Examining sets of unit blocks challenges educators to think about relationships since all the blocks are fractional units or multiples of one another. A deeper understanding of the features of unit blocks empowers teachers to support children in ways that promote joyful math learning.
Why is this important?
We believe that young children need opportunities to play with blocks so that they discover and construct their own ideas about shapes, spatial relationships, and equivalence. Likewise, we take a constructivist approach in working with educators of young children. Adults need to engage in math learning practices in ways that are consistent with best practices for teaching children, but at their own level.
FOUNDATIONAL MATH TOPIC: NUMBER OPERATIONS
When children focus on what happens when we join two sets together or separate a set into parts, they learn about how quantities change. When they have lots of experience comparing amounts, they become familiar with thinking about differences between sets. And when they have opportunities to see how a single large set can be composed of two or more smaller sets, they get comfortable with the fact that larger numbers contain smaller numbers. These ways of mentally modeling real situations are what we mean by number operations. © Erikson Institute’s Early Math Collaborative. Reprinted from Big Ideas of Early Mathematics: What Teachers of Young Children Need to Know (2014), Pearson Education.
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