都留市内保育所特別研究報告（Ⅳ）

Abstract

The author has been investigating how young children acquire the concept of numbers at day-care centers in Tsuru under a grant from Tsuru University for Special Research Projects. The results of experiments which treated number concepts are explained and introduced in this paper. The experiments were carried out over five days between June and October in 2011 at Takara day-care center . In chapter 2, the results of the experiment on June 27 with a class of 4-year old children are reported. In this experiment we examined children’s matching ability between two sense modalities: sight and hearing. We found that the children can clap their hands three or four times according to the cardinality of apples in a picture, and that they can indicate the picture of the correct cardinality apples when the teacher claps her hands three or four times. It is believed that young children often choose the elephant when they are asked to decide the more populous object in a picture where one elephant and three ants are drawn. Here, we report that many 4-year old children can indicate ants, or the object of the correct cardinality in such pictures, when the teacher claps her hands three times according to the cardinality of the ants. In chapter 3, the results of the experiment on July 11 with a class of 5-year old children are reported. In this experiment we examined the similar ability of children that had examined for 4-year old children in Chapter 2. It is reported that they can clap their hands four or five times according to the cardinality of apples in a picture, and that they can indicate the picture of the correct cardinality apples when the teacher claps her hands four times or six times (two three times). In chapter 4, the results of the experiment on July 25 with a class of 4-year old children are reported. The experiment treated the abilities of understanding one-to-one correspondence, of cardinalities fewer than six, between circles and circles, and also between circles and arrows. In chapter 5, the results of the experiment on August 5 with a class of 3-year old children are reported. The experiment treated the abilities of understanding the equality of cardinalities smaller than 5, and of clapping the hands the same times of the cardinalities of ants or an elephant in a picture. In chapter 6, the results of the experiments on October 3 with a class of 5-year old children are reported. The experiment treated the abilities of understanding one-to-one correspondence, the concept of piles, counting, logical product, and number order.