Tidy up time provides regular opportunities for sorting and counting things. This daily routine gives purposeful frequent practice for all children, with hunts for missing items or excitingly high numbers. The whole adult team can be involved in targeting children to support and challenge, as well as intervening opportunistically.
This depends on having resources organized in containers with numbered labels showing how many there should be. A number track is useful to match and count things back onto. Outdoors a ‘checkpoint’ of numbered spots can be used for large things like trucks or big balls (see pictures). Many settings will have silhouettes for matching blocks or tools and numbered trike bays outdoors.
Counting
Matching numerals and amounts
Subtraction – ‘how many more?’
Sorting and matching shapes
Children can count how many there are, saying one number for each object and develop ideas of cardinality, that the last number gives the total. If labels say ‘10 scissors’ or ‘110 pieces of lego’, challenges can be differentiated, or children can just count as far as they can, for fun, referring to a 100 square for support.
Children can match numerals with numerals, with trikes and bays, but more importantly, they can read numerals to see how many there should be- numberlines with numbers of dots and giant 100 squares will help as a reference.
Children can count how many more are needed til the target or ‘stopping number’ is reached, eg only four pairs of scissors matched ont o the track, and we need 10, so count the empty spaces to find how many are missing. They can progress to working out mentally that if we have nine, then one more pair is needed. Some may be able to mentally calculate larger missing numbers, either by visualizing, using fingers, or counting on. This is the aspect of subtraction called ‘complementary addition’ or ‘inverse of addition’. It involves seeing numbers as parts within wholes
Silhouettes will encourage children to sort shapes by properties or match the 2D face to an outline.
So how many are there altogether?
What do you notice about the bigger numbers?
Do you think we will have the right number now, with those two?
How did you know we would have the right number?
Number tracks for matching things on, or checkpoint spots painted outdoors (just use powder paint), number lines and 100 squares for easy reference to support counting to high numbers. A number line with matching numbers of dots, arranged in recognizable patterns, will help children give meaning to numerals on labels.
Calculators can be used to support counting, like a clicker tally, by pressing + 1 =, then pressing = repeatedly.
Providing more opportunities