A study analysed the parents’ responses of 128 children aged six to seven years, on the issue of children’s mathematical experiences at home. Research question was associated with insights on the emergence of mathematical expierences in a variety of everyday activities in home environments, of the children attended kindergarten for one or more years (57 children), and the children attended kindergarten only a month (71 children). Content analysis was used as a method, quantitative and qualitative in nature (Bern, 2000). Data were observed through the matrix of frequency occurrence of mathematical concepts, and through searching for the patterns relating to the similarities and differences.
Qualitative categories were analyzed as "spaces for learning of mathematical knowledge, operations, skills and attitudes in the home environments". The most dominant was the place of purchase, and "exchange of goods", which included complex mental processes with abstract mathematical contents. Understanding the time relationships and the passage of time, set within a past, present or future, was reflected in children’s comprehension as a determinant of an event or a determinant of human development. Automatism in arithmetic processes, specially in addition, division and multiplication, respectively, appeared on a manipulative, a verbal, and a mental level. Noticing properties of numbers directed to labels, symbols, meanings, estimation, the place-value representation, principle of cardinality and usage of ordinal relations.
Implication of the study is related to assumption, that the family is the first, rich and complex environment favourable for multiple ways of young children’s learning. Consequently, understanding of children's previous experiences they bring into institutional educational context should be taken seriously, especially within the process of preschool curriculum planning, developing and evaluating. The curriculum could be ’stretched’ more broader to the development of relations with the families and the actions for the ’curriculum sustainability’ towards micro-systems such as home environments.
