Counting continuously

We use the term counting continuously to describe this early stage of children’s early representations of calculation strategies – both addition and subtraction. Though not directly taught, Hughes (1986, p.35) suggests that it is self-taught.

The breakfast cafe

The children were preparing for a 'breakfast cafe' in their classroom. Alsion (5 years, 1 month) was counting the children in her group, and also each child's soft toy, in order to work out the total number who would be eating. This number would then be added to the others in her class, with their toys.

Alison represented her count as a string of numerals. When self-checking (a mature decision), she found that she had written too many numbers, and drew brackets round those she did not need (15, 16 and 17). The hand she drew may have represented the action of adding, although in this instance we cannot be sure.

Taxonomy: Calculations – children's own methods, symbolic operations with small numbers; counting continuously
The Maths: Early addition

Selling flowers

Alison, (4 years,11 months) was playing in the class's pretend play garden centre, and was serving a customer who had just asked for four flowers. Alison rapidly drew the 16 flowers in the pot, then wrote '16', followed by '12' as the total number of flowers that remained. She hadn’t been asked to draw or write anything, but appeared to find this helpful.

Taxonomy: Calculations – children's own methods: Symbolic operations with small numbers; counting continuously
The Maths: Substraction

'How old are you?'

Baylee just had her 5th birthday, and wanted to find out the ages of
the other children in her class. After writing the numbers 1 - 10, she
began to add ticks beneath the ages the children had confirmed.

When she showed her teachers, she pointed to the ticks beneath
the 2' and the '7' (there were no children of these ages in her class).
She explained that her brother was 7 years of age, and her friend's
sister was 2. Then she asked her teacher her age, and writing '35' at the to of her paper, gave it a tick. Finally, she counted the ticks for each age, finding that '5' had the most ticks.

Taxonomy: Calculations – children's own methods: counting continuously
The Maths: Data handling