The ability of children in kindergarten to work with rigid transformations

Abstract

In kindergartens, there are activities focused on rigid transformations in which children work mainly with axial symmetry, translation or rotation. They thus learn to distinguish on the basis of their perception of rigid transformations, which leads to the development of geometric visualization. An experiment was conducted in the Czech Republic to investigate the ability of kindergarten children to work with different rigid transformations. The objectives of the experiment were to determine the success of children in performing tasks using rigid transformations in the plane, to determine the difficulty of the given tasks and to determine which type of transformation is the most difficult for children of a given age category and which type of transformation is, on the contrary, the easiest. Given that children aged 2 to 3 years participated in the experiment, seven simple tasks were created that focused on translation, axial symmetry and rotation. The children mainly used manipulation to solve the tasks. They were selecting pairs of identical shapes, looking for differences between pictures, creating pictures according to a pattern, stringing beads according to a pattern or putting together pictures from two axisymmetric pieces. The results of the experiment showed that the most difficult task for the children of this age category was the creation of a beaded bracelet according to a pattern, for which they were using translation and rotation. The easiest task was to assemble pictures from two axisymmetric pieces.