The main role of the pre-school education is that of socializing, of child’s opening to the world and to the inner as well. The essence of this delicate process is the human communication between the participants at the educational act: the children and the pre-school teacher. From this point of view, using the computer as a didactic strategy is not justified, in fact it is not advisable. On the other hand, children at this age get acquainted with the first mathematical notions which represent the basis of the future mathematical knowledge during school years. At this level, the emphasis is mainly more on the formative element and less on the informative one. Among the mathematical concepts introduced in the pre-school years, the natural numbers and the arithmetical operation with natural numbers ( addition and substraction ) are the most important. The underlying idea is the action that has the result the transformation from an initial state to a final one. Unlike the other didactic methods, the educational soft has the capacity to illustrate this dynamics. Moreover, it integrates the three obligatory stages of the notion forming at this age, namely concrete, iconic and abstract. Based on a thorough analysis of the educational activity in kindergarten, this paper aims to justify, from a double viewpoint (mathematical and methodical), the advantages of using the educational soft in forming the notion of natural number and mathematical operation. It addresses to the pre-school teachers, parents, pedagogy students and to the educational soft makers as well.

pre-school, learning process, arithmetical operation, didactic strategy, educational soft.