Stories
The growing series begins with the fully illustrated story Mat and the Peach Pit — A Story About Up and Down, now available in the shop as a downloadable edition, with a printed copy also available from Amazon and Kindle. This first book introduces children to position, direction, growth, change and the actual experience of vertical space.
The second book, Mat and the World Around, is currently in development and is due for publication in the next few months. It will continue Mat’s journey into spatial awareness, exploring ideas such as near and far, here and there, left and right, direction, orientation, landmarks and the four cardinal directions.
As the series grows, Mat’s adventures will help children notice the mathematical relationships already present in the world around them: position, movement, pattern, sequence, shape, change, order and spatial relationship.
By meeting these ideas first through meaningful stories, children can begin to build confidence, curiosity, spatial awareness and a more natural feeling for mathematical thinking. The aim is to help mathematics feel less like a set of rules to memorise and more like a way of seeing, moving through and understanding.
Meet Mat, the Math Mouse
Mat was born from a deep love of mathematics and story. It is inspired by Waldorf Education that has long understood that young children do not first meet the world through explanation. They meet it through image, rhythm, movement, wonder, imitation and actual physical experience. In Waldorf teaching, the arts and more specifically storytelling is integral to teaching throughout the primary school years to carry important lessons into the heart of the child before they are drawn into formal intellectual understanding. Only later, especially around Grades 6 and 7, does the more consciously analytical and abstract way of learning begin to unfold.
In my own studies and work with children, I began to notice a significant gap in the way mathematics is introduced in the early years. Waldorf Education already offers a richer and more imaginative approach than many systems, but even here I felt that something needed to be brought more fully into focus: a dedicated, conscious awakening of spatial awareness.
This does not only mean helping children move well with their bodies, although that is important. It also means helping them notice the space around them, name it, feel it and become awake to its qualities. Left and right. Near and far. Small and large. Top and bottom. Up and down. Around, underneath, above, beside, between. These are not decorative words. They are some of the earliest actual roots of mathematical language.
A child who notices space begins to orient themselves in the world. A child who names space begins to think about relationship. A child who feels movement, direction, distance, sequence and change is already standing at the doorway of mathematical thought.
This awareness does not need to be taught in a dry or intellectual way. It can live in simple moments: the snail moving slowly across the path; the dog running fast in circles; the sun rising every morning in the same part of the sky; the child saying, “I am here.” It can live in watching water fill a bucket quickly when the tap is opened wide, or slowly when only a trickle comes through. It can live in seeing a cake rise in the heat of the oven, waiting for a kettle to boil, or discovering how long one can run before the body begins to tire.
Observing, noticing and naming these experiences are not separate from mathematics. They are the beginning of mathematics.
Before number becomes symbol, before geometry becomes diagram, before measurement becomes calculation, the child must first experience position, movement, direction, quantity, rhythm, sequence, change and relationship in the living world. Without this foundation, later mathematical concepts can feel strangely disconnected, as though they have arrived from nowhere. With it, mathematics begins to make sense because it grows out of something the child already knows in body, language, imagination and experience.
This is where the idea of Mat was born.
Mat is a small mouse, and with his smallness come many challenges. He does not always know where he is going. He does not always understand what is happening around him. He often meets the world through effort, curiosity, uncertainty and not knowing. Yet, step by step, with the help of trusted friends and kind strangers, he finds his way.
On his journeys, Mat discovers the space around him. He moves through it, bumps into it, climbs through it, waits inside it, looks up into it, looks down from it, and begins to wonder about its mysteries. He asks questions. He notices what is above and below, what is near and far, what changes slowly and what changes quickly. He becomes aware that the world is full of relationships and that these relationships matter.
In the Mat stories, much attention is given to spatial orientation and to the way a young child must first navigate the world physically before being asked to understand it abstractly. Mat names what he experiences. He wonders about what he sees. He is deeply affected by his surroundings and he slowly learns how the world around him shapes his safety, his courage, his choices and his sense of belonging.