Pre-Number Concepts 1

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What are Pre-number Concepts & Skills?

Children come to school with some math-related skills which they learn at home.

Among these are identifying small quantities perceptually (which we call perceptual numbers). In the previous chapter we talked about strengthening their understanding and ability of perceptual numbers in pre-school.

We also talked about a set of skills called "pre-number skills", which set the foundation for children to understand the abstract concept of a number.

In this and the next two chapters we will deal with various aspects of pre-number concepts and activities to enable children to understand them.

Some of the most basic pre-number concepts are

These activities enable children to observe various physical characteristics of items in a collection and learn to form collections based on some of these. An important lesson is also that the same item, say a green triangle, can belong to a collection of green items and also triangles. The membership of a set is not fixed but dependent on the selected criteria.
 * 1) Compare &amp; Contrast
 * 2) Belong/ Does not belong
 * 3) Pairing
 * 4) Grouping/ Sorting by physical attributes like colour, shape, texture, size etc

Compare &amp; Contrast

Ideas like - Tall/ Short, Big Small, Sweet/ Sour, Loud/ Soft, Heavy/ Light. Tall/ Short, Big/ Small, Rough/ Smooth, Soft/ Hard, Sweet/ Sour, Hot/ Cold, Loud/ Soft, Heavy/ Light, Blue/ Green, Bright/ Dull

Belong/ Does Not Belong 

Children need to play with things which have a variety of characteristics like colour, shape, texture, taste, smell etc. This helps them to identify different characteristics of items in a collection.

One of the basic skills is to look at a collection and decide which items can be made into a group and which items do not belong to that group. For example, there could be a green piece in a collection of red pieces. Or there could be a triangular piece in a collection of rectangular pieces.

Children should be allowed to make independent decisions on these but explain the reason behind their decision. This gives them a sense of autonomy, improves both their critical thinking but also their ability to use language to explain their decisions.

Pairing – This is to locate 2 objects which are connected in some familiar way. They can be of 2 kinds; like and unlike.

Unlike items which can be paired are shoe &amp; socks, eyes &amp; spectacles, pencil &amp; eraser etc. The items look totally different from each other but still connected.

Like items are a pair of shoes (left &amp; right), palms (right &amp; left).

These exercises with things familiar to the child would develop its mental ability.

Sorting– Sorting is one of the most basic and important activities. Children play with different materials and group them in different ways as per the any of the physical properties. The child sees a green triangle piece in a group sometimes with green things of different shapes and sometimes with triangles of different colours. By repeatedly seeing things as part of different collections, they form an idea of a set of objects. By seeing sets of containing various quantities they also get a sense of the cardinality of sets.

Sorting is also a critical thinking activity which is very necessary in any learning activity. For example, any definition in Science basically says which set a particular thing belongs to and at the same time identifies in what way it is different from that set.

For example, consider the definition &ldquo;a plant is a living being which makes its own food&rdquo;. It is first clarified that the plant belongs to a set of &ldquo;living things&rdquo;. Then it is clarified as to how it is different from other living beings in that set by saying &ldquo;they make their own food&rdquo; whereas other living beings do not make their own food.

We have seen in Chapter 4.3 the rough stages by which sorting activities enable children to observe collections with varying numbers of items and slowly develop an idea of different quantities and strengthen number sense.

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