There is some misunderstanding that Children's Mathematical Graphics is all about children's drawings. However, we developed this approach in order to resolve the problem that Hiebert (1984) had identified, 

that,

      "many children experience difficulty in learning school mathematics because its abstract and formal nature is 

much different from the intuitive and informal mathematics the children acquire ... Much of school mathematics involves representing ideas with symbols and manipulating the symbols according to prescribed rules [... presenting] a serious learning and instructional problem. Many children do not connect the mathematical concepts and skills they possess, with the symbols and rules they are taught in school ... it is the absence of these connections that induces the shift from intuitive and meaningful problem-solving approaches to mechanical and meaningless ones (pp. 498, 501).

We developed Children's Mathematical Graphics to help children come to understand the formal symbol system of mathematics, through at first using their own, intuitive ways of representing mathematics, including their own signs and symbols. They will occasionally draw pictures, but in order to 'close the gap' that Martin Hughes (1986) wrote of, Children's Mathematical Graphics are much, much more than this.