Hitting the books

There’s no better way to kick off a Tuesday morning than to meet dozens of smiling preschoolers.

Earlier this week I stopped by the Bombeck Center, where math professor Virginia Keen’s students, early childhood education majors, were reading counting books they wrote as an assignment.

College students and preschoolers huddled together on couches, behind desks and on the floor, reading and interacting. The books taught the students how to count animals, fruit, flowers — you name it, they were reading it.

The giggly preschoolers pointed to the colorful pages, counting along with the college students. One preschooler even stayed to reread a book multiple times.

Keen told her students, in reflecting on the experience, to focus on, “what you learned about children’s abilities to think mathematically and what it means to be a meaningful counter.”