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Counting- Don’t be fooled

by Jennifer Asimow

Many young children can count up to ten, twenty, fifty and even a hundred. They recite the words, one, two, three and so on, often while they are not actually counting something in particular. Don’t be fooled. Counting like this, is a memorization task, that requires many skills, none of which are mathematical. Learning the sequence of the words may be mathematical in the purest sense, but counting is primarily a language skill.

One Reply to “Counting- Don’t be fooled”

  1. Counting is memorized it is true. The kids now exactly how to say the words in order. I try to fool them by starting with a number in the middle and sometimes I feel they still have the order memorized.

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