Very Early MATH

And that starting point is Not Counting.

SET 1 of this series doesn't start with counting because for counting to make sense, a child must first understand why we count-to find out how many of something are in a group. So, an even better place to begin when trying to help a child understand numbers and to lay the foundation for math is to help a child understand the idea of a group by helping them recognize and label the small groups they can already "see."

Children and adults have a natural ability to see and tell apart small quantities without counting. This ability is called subitizing. Most of us can easily identify a group of 1 ( * ) versus a group of 2 ( * * ) versus a group of 3 ( * * * ). But, a group with more just looks like different amounts of "many."

SET 1 of this series helps a child recognize and name the size of small groups a child can already see and tell apart without counting: a group of "one" ( * ) a group of "two" ( * * ) and a group of "three" ( * * * ). Later SETS focus on counting and how counting is used to tell us "how many" in these small groups we can "see" as well as groups that are too large to tell "how many" just by looking.