ABSTRACT
One cannot underestimate the importance of the early stages of maths development. There is a great deal for a child to learn and many crucial concepts to understand. Learning to count involves much more than just reciting a sequence of numbers. Stable order is understanding that people always count in the same order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. They can’t change this order as people have a set number name for each numerical quantity. It is important that learners have the opportunity to count backwards as well as forwards. One-to-one correspondence is understanding that each item has one count only. Cardinality is understanding that the last number people say when they count a set is how many items there are in that set. Learners who haven’t mastered cardinality will recount their fingers from one each time and have not realised that once they have counted five fingers, they don’t need to count from one again.
