Project GeoChild
Developing geometric skills in early childhood
This project aims to explore how basic geometric skills (e.g., recognizing and categorizing geometric shapes or navigating in space) can be promoted in everyday kindergarden activities and which learning prerequisites are beneficial for this.
Mathematics is also known as the science of patterns and structures. This can be clearly seen in the way we deal with geometric shapes. Children are exposed to geometric patterns and structures from an early age when they play with building blocks, puzzles and the like. The GeoChild project is trying to find out how geometric skills develop and how they can be promoted in everyday kindergarten life.
In recent years, there has already been differentiated evidence for the mathematical area of numbers, quantities and operations as to which skills promote successful numeracy and arithmetic development. In contrast, there is comparatively little empirically validated knowledge about the development of basic skills in the areas of space and form, and thus geometry. It has been suggested that the acquisition of geometric knowledge relies on two core cognitive systems: one for the representation of relatively large-scale shapes, which is used for navigation in space, and another for the representation of small-scale shapes, which enables the recognition and categorisation of objects.
Based on this, the project investigates how basic geometric skills (e.g. recognition and categorisation of geometric shapes or navigation in space) can be developed in preschool children and what learning conditions are advantageous for this.