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'. Alison (5 years, 1 month) was counting the children in her group and each child's toy, ignorer to work out the total number of children who would be eating. This number would then be added to the others in her class (with their toys). Alison counted both children and toys, representing them as string of numerals. When self-checking she found that she had too many numbers, and drew brackets around those she did not need (15, 16 and 17). The final number in her count represented her total. The hand she drew may denote addition, although we cannot be sure in this instance.
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Selling Flowers Alice (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. Alice rapidly drew the 16 flowers in the pot, and then crossed out four of them. She then wrote '16' and next to it the total of '12' that remained.
continuously
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| “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 various children had confirmed. When she showed her teacher, 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 top of her paper, gave it a tick. Finally, she counted the ticks for each age, finding that '5' had the most ticks.
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