Content area
Full Text
Early math is as important as early literacy for children's future achievement. In fact, early math skills are more predictive of later school success than early reading skills (Duncan et al. 2007). During preschool many children start to acquire a deeper understanding of number principles, and the quality and quantity of teachers' support of math learning plays a crucial role in the growth of children's math knowledge. The goal of this article is to support teachers of young children by clarifying two key numerical concepts that children acquire during preschool: understanding how to count and how to label quantities. Along the way, educators will learn strategies for teaching these concepts, discover the types of errors many young children make as they gradually acquire the two concepts, and find out how to address the misconceptions and errors.
The primary focus of math instruction in most preschools is on teaching children how to count (Early et al. 2005; Lee & Ginsburg 2009). This is an important skill, but recent research shows that during this developmental period, it is crucial to acquire another skill: attaching number word "labels" (one, two, three) to small sets of objects (Le Corre & Carey 2007; Sarnecka & Lee 2009). Learning to label small set sizes is an essential stepping stone for preschool children on their way to developing an understanding of the cardinality principle-that is, understanding that the last number stated when counting a set of objects represents the numerosity, or quantity, of the whole set. Once children understand cardinality, they can identify how many items are in any countable set. This is crucial for developing more complex numerical knowledge, including how to solve addition and subtraction problems.
How do preschoolers' numerical skills develop?
Helping children understand cardinality is a lengthy process that involves teachers modeling and supporting both counting and labeling the quantities of sets. Numerical development in preschool includes several skills that are developed simultaneously. Learning one concept or skill (e.g., one-to-one counting, also called one-to-one correspondence) depends on improvements in another (e.g., labeling set sizes), and vice versa. Since learning concepts and skills seldom happens in isolation, they should not be taught in isolation. "Development of Counting and Labeling Set Sizes," a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles, represents...