Parents and teachers, remember the importance of providing the concrete foundation for numbers. Here is an easy guide to give children a great foundation to:
IDENTIFYING NATURAL NUMBERS
- Teach children how to count aloud. (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10…
- Show them what the number look like as they say them.
- Show them with number of dots that each number represents. (1. 2: 3:. 4:: 5::
- Show them one-to-one correspondence with a manipulative (Something they can touch and hold in their hands- beans, pennies, cubes…)
Work on natural numbers (how we naturally learn to count) for as long as needed in order to gain full understanding. Ask the child to give you a number to build.
This process gives children something to recall, a picture of in their mind. This is called CONCRETE. If students do not have the objects, they can work on the problem by drawing it if necessary. This is called REPRESENTATION. Finally using the numbers and symbols, this is the ABSTRACT. Learning should occur amongst the three forms when learning a new skill. Going straight to abstract without the concrete foundation leaves children to memorize and not truly understand WHAT they are learning.
Beginning with one-to-one correspondence teaches them that each item is counted as one. This will allow students to learn much more advanced levels when they have the opportunity to build problems with Hands-On materials.
