For Immediate Release:

August 3, 2020

NAEYC Publishes New Resource to Help Teachers Increase Children’s Success in Math

Washington, D.C.-- The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) announces the publication of Embracing Math: Cultivating a Mindset for Exploring and Learning. 

Discover what math teaching and learning look like in the playful, emergent environment of the early childhood classroom. Every day, children explore math concepts in their conversations and interactions. You can build on that natural curiosity by engaging children in meaningful, complex math learning opportunities that are grounded in their observations and questions.

Based on the experiences in her own classroom, author Deanna Pecaski McLennan helps you reflect on your curriculum through a mathematical lens and see the potential for math teaching and learning everywhere. Each chapter of this engaging, easy-to-read book is packed with practical strategies and ideas for fostering hands-on, collaborative, integrated math explorations and inquiries with preschoolers and kindergartners.

With the information and guidance in this resource, you will develop a math-rich classroom while increasing children’s interest, confidence, and success in mathematics. 

Pecaski McLennan draws from many sources of inspiration and includes a wide range of meaningful activities for children’s engagement with mathematics, from interactions with natural objects to the foundations of computer coding. Each chapter includes ways to encourage and leverage children’s natural curiosity by assisting them in making connections to mathematics in the world around them in structured and unstructured ways. This book supports emerging mathematicians in an age-appropriate and effective manner. 

—Andrew M. Tyminski, Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, Clemson University

Embracing Math is a valuable resource to help teachers find and use the math that is all around us in their early childhood classrooms. Not only does it include many specific examples, it also provides a strong conceptual framework about exploring and embedding math through questions, conversations, and inquiries. 

—Mary Hynes-Berry, Coauthor of Where’s the Math? and Faculty, Erikson Institute and Early Math Collaborative

About the author:

DEANNA PECASKI MCLENNAN

Deanna Pecaski McLennan, PhD, is a passionate early childhood educator, researcher, and writer from Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada, who has spent over 20 years working with young children. As a teacher in Ontario’s full-day kindergarten program and a university instructor, she devotes her research and practice to exploring the potential for rich mathematics learning through playful inquiry and exploration.

Email [email protected] for author interview availability.

Embracing Math: Cultivating a Mindset for Exploring and Learning is available for purchase in the NAEYC online store. For more information on this book and other resources, visit NAEYC.ORG/resources/pubs. 
 

###

NAEYC is the foremost professional membership organization committed to transforming the lives of young children and delivering on the promise of high-quality early learning. NAEYC represents 60,000 early childhood educators who care for, educate, and work on behalf of young children, birth through age 8. Learn more about NAEYC at www.NAEYC.org.