This case study involves one public school in a suburb of a major metropolitan area, focusing on one classroom of first grade students selected from a pool of volunteer classrooms. The first grade class of students, during their regular mathematics instruction, were given three tasks by their teachers designed to elicit a productive struggle experience in mathematics. Field notes were taken on student actions to better understand if the characteristics of productive struggle initially identified by Warshauer (2014) in the middle level setting would also emerge at the early childhood setting. Using six adaptive characteristics and a framework of anticipated behaviors I was able to use observational data to confirm the characteristics of productive struggle did in fact mirror those found in the Warshauer (2014) study with students at the early childhood level. In this study, I was able to observe the frequency with which the characteristics emerged in the individual tasks as well as the frequency seen across the tasks. Insight into what these adaptive characteristics look like are also recorded in this study and serve practitioners in the field by providing an idea of what to look for in early childhood productive struggle in mathematics. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]