This is a Childs native language. It is expected to be L1 of the child.

Why is the mother tongue important?

1. It facilitate better understanding and it enalisation of concepts and promotes continuity in their thinking.
2. The early use of mother tongue will facilitate the person’s expression of intelligence, capacity and adaptability.
   NPE stipulates that the language of instruction should be the language of environment or mother tongue till the end of Primary 3.
   The mother tongue is not easily able to go into extinction.

Disadvantages of mother tongue
As describe as the policy statement there are some technical and pedagogical problems associated with the use of mother tongues as medium of instruction.
Some of the disadvantages are:

1. Few natural languages have developed orthography for writing them.
2. Very few of the languages have textbooks written in them.
3. There are sometimes conceptual problems resulting from the difference in the mode of thought, in Nigerian Language and English.

To solve some of these problems the government will need to:

1. Develop the orthography of many more Nationalized languages.
2. Publish textbooks in Nationalized language.
3. Have educational graduates become linguists.

1. For communication: most of the things communicated in early years are self centered i.e. they are based on egocentric speech. Egocentric speeches are speech that is not communicated. Communication only takes places when ideas are shared in social center speech.
2. Language is used to regulate and control their behaviour: this is used for example to obey rules.
3. Children use language in thinking to solve problems.

Process of Language Acquisition.

1. At 18 months: nouns and interjection make up 60% of a child’s utterance. At this period, the child begins to utter single words that refers to specific things they have had contact to e.g. ma-ma. They talk predominately about food, people, part of the body, etc. as they use these words they become aware of their roles in community settings.

2. At 2years, the child sentence has 12 words, states simple request and description and sentence lacks auxiliaries, articles, connectives and preposition, it is during this stage that child start to combine words with two utterance
3. At 2-3 years, the child’s speech consists mainly of nouns, verbs, adjectives and a few pronouns and also hardly any corrections/connectives
4. At 3-4 years, child’s distribution of parts of speech in his conversation approximates that of adults
5. At the age of 4, children use complete sentences, 6-8 words get longer, complex and complete with plurals, past and future tense. The importance of language in communication makes it necessary for children to acquire it.
   Both the environment and innate abilities of a child should be stimulated to encourage language development.

Language is a system of sounds and words used by humans to express their feelings and thoughts.

Language is a combination of words used by nation, race or people.

Is language acquired or innate?
Language acquisition refers to the learning of language for comprehension and production.

Language comprehension refers to how much a Childs understand a language i.e. the depth of what is spoken from birth. While language production refers to a child ability to use language e.g. daddy, mummy.

Some psychologist like Garot says that language operating principles are part of our biological heritage i.e. it is not necessary to sit a child to learn a language but they have an ability to adapt the language of their environment.

The behaviorist who are of the opinion that language is learned in the environment i.e. children learn language only through conditioning. The environment teaches the child its language. Whether language is acquired or innate, imitation is very important used by the child.

Firstly you need a generalist teacher. Generalist teachers are teachers that can teach a subjects.

1. The first you do is to teach them how to hold a pencil.
2. Give room for scrabbling to help develop fine motor skill
3. Tracing the dotted lines to develop their eye contact.

TEACHING ADDITION

1. Making them know the addition sign
2. Introduce to the concept of all together, put together, total, equal to

Steps in Teaching Children Addition

1. Making them know the addition signs +
2. Introduce children to the concept of all together, put together, total, equal to, etc.
3. You teach children with object they are familiar with and what they can handle because children respond to visual object e.g. bottles, cartons, cantars, bags, pencils, etc.
4. Provide children item in small groups

5. You can provide children with a set of object e.g.
6. You can use games to teach addition e.g. ludo, snake and ladder, coin and money

1. Comparing object and describing them with words like longer, shorter, smaller, greater, equal, less than, heavy, large.
2. Playing with and describing 2- D and 3D shapes.
3. Describing where things are position e.g. north, outside, under, behind, above, opposite, etc. they can be found in calculating degree, bearing, etc.
4. Describing, copying and extending patterns found in every day situation.
5. Saying number names forward in sequence 10,20 and beyond
6. Using numbers to describe and compare collection
7. Matching names, symbols and quantities 4D to 10

1. They learn mathematics with concrete materials. They need these such as blocks, counters, cowries, sticks, legs in order to make sense of new mathematical concretes, this helps them to connect and to abstract maths symbols such as +, -, x and =
2. They need lot of time to learn maths: they need ample time to play with these materials before the teachers can make meaningful use of them.
3. They learn maths with meaningful vocabulary: they need to link maths to their everyday activities, experience and language.

1. The use of shapes: playing with shapes, talking to them about different types of shapes, counting, putting shapes in different perspective, describing the shapes, encouraging them to make their own shape and telling them to do something with it.
2. Counting and sorting. Helping them to gather different types of toys e.g. matches sticks, cowries, etc. and encouraging counting and sorting them based on shapes, size and likeness fosters mathematical skills in them.

3. Using size: encouraging children to notice the sizes of object around and helping them describe using less, smaller, bigger equal fosters mathematical skills in them
4. Using sand and water: These skills can be fostered by encouraging them to fill, stir, build and pour through these activities, children learn to measure, count, add and estimate, etc.
5. Exploring the environment: it gives children opportunities to assess, evaluate, make judgement and compare similarities and differences e.g. estimating distance.
6. Picture time: the majority deals with distance measuring 1cm,angles, etc.

Mathematics is the study of such types like quantity, structures, space and change. Mathematics developed from counting, calculation, measurement and systematic study of shape and motion of physical object.

Early Numeracy in children refers to the funding of mathematical require in early childhood

Pre- math in childhood is a term used to refer to mathematical skill learned by pre-school such as learning to count numbers and learning the prefer sequencing of numbers.

1. Number sense: this is the ability to count accurately first forward and later backward as children grow older. E.g.1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 and 10, 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1.
2. Pre- presentation: this is making maths idea real by using words, pictures, symbols and objects e.g. building blocks.

• Sparfial sense: this is the geometry but in the early years. It is simply the introduction of shapes, sizes, space, position to children as they advance, you talk about cone, cuboids etc.

• Measurement: this is finding the length, height, weight of an object using unit like inches, but in the early years, measurement is simply limited for heipina children to help fill measurement car waters, sand, granulated sugar, gravel.

• Estimation: this is the ability to make a good guess about the size of something in comparison between object. In ECE, measurement is reduced to the understanding of the meaning of words like less, smaller, bigger, etc. e.g. my ball is bigger than her ball.

• Pattern: it refers to thing like numbers, shapes and images that continue in a logical way. They have children make predictions, understand what comes next, make logical connections and use reasoning skills.

• Problem solving: it is the ability to think through a problem i.e. using logical thinking to find answers.

Example:-
Jeffrey has 2 apples, mummy gave him 2 more apples, and how many does he have altogether.

Solution
00 + 00 = 0000
What teachers need to do for these children in early years is to provide the necessary building blocks for the entire academic carrier by introducing them to all simple math skills.

IMPORTANCE OF MATH IN EARLY YEARS OF CHILDREN.

1. Maths helps children to develop logical thinking and reasoning strategies in their everyday activities.
2. It helps them to make sense of numbers, line, patterns and shapes for activities like cooking, reading, instructions, etc.
3. It helps them to gain the necessary foundational skills for success in life
4. It helps them to develop the skills for accessing the broader curriculum.
5. Early maths helps them prepare for employment.

The national leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has responded to the state of the nation address by the former vice president and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic party, Atiku Abubakar. He described most of the issues raised by Atiku as anchored on tissues of lies.

The PDPs presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku, recently made comments regarding suspension of CJN Onnoghen. Atikus release is entitled State of the nation address. I encourage everyone to read it. In its disregard for the truth and patent misrepresentations, it will go down in political history as a classic of self-incrimination. Atiku thinks the piece exalts him. Instead it evinces his penchant for wilful misstatement that make him unfit for the office he now seeks and has always coveted.

In the statement, he claims to have dedicated all his life to the defence of democracy. Those of you who know him, and even those who dont, know this is not true. If all of his life has been dedicated to support for democracy, then he is far too young to run for president; however, I must congratulate him for having somehow managed to find or begin a second life. This rebirth as a defender of democracy must have taken place only a few short hours ago.

His previous life of over seventy years was one of skirting democracy and of blatant impunity in attempting to enshrine reactionary government and installing an unjust political economy on the backs of the people.

In his address, he claims the nation has entered a difficult moment. To my dear and good friend Atiku, I say the difficulty is not so much with the moment but with your memory.

When you lorded over Nigeria in tandem with President Obasanjo, there were myriad court orders mandating that your government render to Lagos state the funds due it to improve the lives of its millions of inhabitants. Instead, you gladly and without dispute joined Obasanjo in utter disregard for these unambiguous legal verdicts. In so doing, you demeaned the rule of law. You also readily sacrificed the economic development and welfare of millions of innocent people in Lagos just to gain some illicit political advantage that proved to be fleeting and of no avail to you in the end.

You now speak of democracy and the need for executive restraint. But such verbal finery never crossed your lips or traversed your pen when you and Obasanjo improperly removed Senate Presidents more easily than a trendy cad exchanges a pair of shoes or changes the subject of his false affections. Your love for democracy is such that you were recently observed apologising to the PDP for not rigging the Lagos 2003 gubernatorial polls as you did the polls in the other Southwestern states.

When you lorded over Nigeria in tandem with President Obasanjo, there were myriad court orders mandating that your government render to Lagos state the funds due it to improve the lives of its millions of inhabitants. Instead, you gladly and without dispute joined Obasanjo in utter disregard for these unambiguous legal verdicts. In so doing, you demeaned the rule of law

Source: NAN