“Book of Nature”: How to Teach Children to Read It?

Modern science and technology are founded on the belief in the rationality and mathematical structure of the world. Learning about it, the progress and quality of our lives are related to the popularization of thinking about mathematical education as equipping students with the competencies necessary to read the Galilean “Book of Nature.” The article presents the idea of ​​a mathematical understanding of reality and the leading emotional-volitional and instrumental competencies that should be provided to students of elementary education in order to shape their beliefs about the effectiveness of this way of cognition and support them in acquiring appropriate knowledge and skills. In terms of field-specific and social competencies, it is about: awakening cognitive curiosity, building the attitude of epistemic and ethical optimism, belief in the inevitability and cognitive value of error, developing the ability to cooperate and compete in small groups, and to shape the attitude of researcher reliability. In terms of instrumental competencies, these would be: the ability to model phenomena at the level of substitutes (simulations), knowledge of numbers, decimal positional system and four arithmetic operations, the understanding of measurement and practical knowledge of measures, the ability to problematize phenomena from the natural world, having elementary knowledge of heuristics, a certain level of calculation efficiency and knowledge of basic geometric figures.