This week the children have been focusing on the purpose of counting - to find out 'how many' objects there are. Through this learning they have also revisited the concept of 'cardinality' - the last number in the count tells us how many there are altogether. 

The children were provided with opportunities to hear, join in with and develop their knowledge of the counting sequence and to become secure enough with their counting skills to be able to count out a set of objects from a larger set, remembering the ‘stopping number’ and knowing that this means they have selected the correct number.

To begin to understand the word pattern embedded within most of our number names, the children were also given opportunities to practise counting beyond 20. We met Polly Parrot, our counting puppet, who helped draw attention to the repeating pattern of the counting numbers. Polly helped the children join in with verbal counts beyond 20 using the repeating pattern of the ‘1s’. It is important to point out here that the expectation is not that the children know ALL of the number names beyond 20, but rather that they hear the repeating pattern in the numbers and develop confidence in using the familiar sequence within 10 to count to bigger numbers.

Another key focus this week was to consolidate the ‘stable order principle’ – rehearsing the order of the first 10 numbers and understanding that the position that each number holds in our number sequence does not change. Images of the Numberblocks, alongside the children’s own fingers, were used to represent ‘5 and a bit’ quantities, which will help to embed this key understanding.