This activity was developed for our graduate students (prospective early childhood teachers). It helps adults to understand how determining how many can involve many different strategies and ideas.

In this activity prospective or practicing teachers attempt to learn to count in a foreign language (Farsi). The experience is designed to help them understand how children feel when they learn to count, and what kind of learning is involved in mastering the counting words.

The idea of how many is deep, abstract, and cognitively demanding, involving learning number words and figuring out of the number of objects in a collection.  Ben illustrates learning what how many really means.

Learning to count is more than memorizing the words from one to ten. Memory is crucial, but so are ideas. Ben’s example can help you understand this. 

A thinking story about one child’s counting from one to 99 (she says she has to ask her mother about what comes after that). A thinking story is a written narrative presented along with embedded and carefully selected video clips–a kind of multimedia case study–that attempts to bring to life the drama of a child’s mathematical thinking.

This account describes how number develops in the preschool range, from about 3-5 years, and provides a detailed overview of the various skills and understandings that children need in order to achieve competence in counting. 

An accessible introduction to mathematical ideas basic to counting. Counting depends on mathematical ideas, including the pattern and structure of our number system, the magnitude of numbers, and how numbers can be decomposed and combined.

Dr. Herb Ginsburg draws on his expertise on the development of mathematical thinking to detail the importance of counting for young children, the complex nature of counting, and the necessity of attending to children's thinking as they count.