ABSTRACT
This is a useful image. It means that as well as seeing 6 we see 6 as 2 * 3 or 3 * 2; we may also see 5 as an egg box with one missing, so we know that 6 - 1 = 5. As the numbers get bigger we may have more abstract images, or images that don’t help us relate to the size of a number. I often hear children referring to any big numbers as ‘millions and trillions and millions’ – this just really means ‘big’.
