The number strand and early math

Description

The Number strand is a group of skills that allow children to work with numbers. It includes skills like:

1. Understanding quantities.
2. Exploring concepts like more, less, equal and larger and smaller.
3. Recognizing relationships between single items and groups of items (four means one group of four items).
4. Understanding symbols that represent quantities (5 means the same thing as the number name five).
5. Making number comparisons (14 is greater than 4, and five is half of ten).
6. Understanding the order of numbers in a list: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.

Research suggests that toddlers seem to have an understanding of numbers 1 and 2. So if they are shown 1 object and 2 objects they can tell they are not the same. They can even look at one object and say that’s one and two objects and say that’s two. As children grow a little older and during their initial explorations with numbers children may be able to discern between quantities 1,2,and 3 and after that it’s just a lot or a collection. In this resource we will explore what makes up the number strand and how it develops in the early years