Mathematics, situations and games at « école maternelle »

International audience(1) Scope and organization of “école maternelle” in France:There are very different organizations of the “pre-elementary” education in different countries. In particular, the ratio between education and teaching may be quite different from one country to another. Ecole maternelle is one of them; it may be interesting to know how it is organized and what are the different pedagogical and didactical contracts at stake.(2) Games and situations: “Game” is a word that has a lot of meaning, “situation”, in Brousseau’s Theory; refer to some meaning of “game”. Taking examples from well know situations designed for pupils from 3 years old to 6 years old, we will work upon these different meanings. These examples will refer to the mathematical notion of quantity. (3) The understanding of numbers for 3-6 years old: a didactical approach: The understanding of numbers is often viewed as essentially a psychological subject. There are obviously a lot of developmental aspects concerning the learning of numbers. However, what we are doing at pre-elementary level will also have a great impact on this understanding. We will try to have a large vision what is at stake at pre-elementary level with a didactical point of view (Margolinas & Wozniak, 2012