Last Monday my Math Methods class went into a nursery school to work with the four year old class. We went into the class to see where the students were developmentally at with math. To do this my math methods class divided up into groups of two and prepared developmentally challenging activities to do with the four year olds . My partner and I prepared two activities in one activity the students needed to copy the pattern we made with the shape titles and then make their own pattern. In the second activity the students had to determine which pile of small and large hearts had more hearts in it. I observed that the students were challenged in both activities.

            In the first activity I found that the students were able to copy the pattern that my partner or I set up for them. When I asked the students what shape came next they were tentative to answer or gave the wrong answer, but when I prompted them by repeating out loud the pattern and reminding them to look at the how the pattern repeated before they were able to give the right answer. When I asked one of the students to make his own pattern he had difficulty with this and just randomly put the shape tiles together to make a shape. When I asked this to another student she was able to make her own pattern that repeated three times and when I asked her where her pattern repeated she was able to answer correctly. With my second activity I had two piles of hearts one pile had 10 small hearts and the other pile had 10 large hearts. When I asked the students which pile had more hearts in it half the students I asked said the pile with the larger hearts and the other half of the students said the pile with the smaller hearts. I then had the students count the number of hearts in each pile. When the students were counting the hearts they had trouble separating the hearts they had already counted with the hearts they did not count and I had to aide them by separating the hearts that the counted. The students were surprised to see that both piles had the same amount of hearts.
 Going into nursery school gave me a perspective to see where the students at four years old were developmentally at. It also gave me as a future teacher a prospective of where I would need to give more explanation when I teach these math concepts.