“MINE IS MORE BIG”: COMPARISON GAMES, LUDIC CULTURE AND APPROPRIATION OF NUMERACY PRACTICES BY A GROUP OF 3 AND 4 YEAR-OLD CHILDREN IN AN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION INSTITUTION

ABSTRACT

This paper is focused on a group of children aged between 3 and 4 years old, in a municipal school for children education, as protagonists on the appropriation processes of numeracy practices not intentionally provoked by a school didactic action. Using contributions of recent childhood sociology, we aimed to understand the integration of these sociocultural practices (of production and use of knowledge that we learned to associate to hegemonic mathematics) to the ludic culture of that group, identifying their marks in the interlocutive games established there. For this, we selected events in which children, playing with construction toys, create and take charge of length comparison games. We analyze children’s actions as pragmatic ones, endowed with a ludic and interactive character, and, as so, producing a signification system that, by incorporating references from social practices of diverse groups, integrate and influence the ludic culture of that group.

KEYWORDS
childhood sociology; ludic culture; numeracy practices; early childhood education