Playdates

Playdate focus

This introduces the idea of Counting On and how valuable it is for understanding quantities and laying a foundation for addition.

Storybook properties

This has counting to 12, colors, shapes, and patterns.

Activities properties

These involve the order of numbers and how numbers compare to each other.

Surprisingly powerful

The technique called Counting On is a simple idea that is surprisingly helpful. As your child gets comfortable with seeing a group of objects as a quantity, start doing Counting On in front of them to help them get the idea of it.

Example

Suppose your child has one row of 3 cards and another row of 4 cards. They can count all the cards one at a time “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7” and see that there are 7 cards. However, if your child recognizes that there are three cards in one row, they don’t need to count those cards. They can start their counting at 3, pointing to the three cards on the first row, and then count the second row “4, 5, 6, 7.” Your child is Counting On starting at 3, and that’s where the name comes from.

Understanding quantities

Being able to Count On saves time and effort. It also signals that your child is getting comfortable seeing the quantity associated with a group of objects and can work with them as a group. This is a big conceptual leap that will be very useful to them in all the adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing soon to come.

Connection with addition

Beginning addition is strongly linked to counting. When given a card with three dots on it, and another card with four dots on it, a child asked to add these two quantities will count them from 1 to 7. It is faster and more powerful to do this adding of 3 and 4 by starting at 3, or 4, and counting on using the other number. You will see finger techniques for doing this in upcoming lessons.