Teaching number sense in preschool takes careful planning, and this is your ultimate guide to becoming a successful parent-teacher in teaching number sense skills to your preschooler.
This post will teach you everything you need to know about quantification in preschool and includes lots of helping counting and number sense activities that are a developmentally appropriate for your budding mathematician!
Number sense is a pretty heavily discussed topic in preschool. It sets the stage for future math achievement and all upcoming math skills rely on a solid foundation of number sense skills.
Read the entire post to see how quantification is an essential (and early) part of number sense and be sure to check out all the number sense activities that are sure to set your preschoolers up for math success!
We created a daily preschool math curriculum that covers everything you’ll need to teach preschool math! We also offer the units available for individual purchase. Our daily math lessons in counting to 20, covers counting from 0-5, 0-10, and 0-20.
When your preschoolers are ready for early addition and subtraction, we have a great unit full of centers and daily lessons!
What is Quantification?
You may know quantification by another name… subitizing. Quantification or subitizing is the ability to identify sets of objects by automatic recognition.
It’s an important number sense skill for children to master. It’s essential because means children have mastered numbers enough to start instantly recognizing number patterns in the real world.
Subitizing is like the sight words of mathematical world.
Here are some examples of subitizing — where we instantly see the quantity without having to count first.
- Pips on a die
- Shoes come in pairs
- Cupcakes in a box at the market
- Recognizing tally points
- Wheels on a tricycle
- Animal feet on quadrapeds
We’ve also put together the ultimate guide to teaching subitizing has tips and tricks to helping children recognize numbers and their patterns. When we teach kids how to subitize, it helps them become more efficient thinkers when doing math!
What is Quantification in Preschool?
Quantification sounds like a big and scary thing, but in actuality, it is one of the first mathematical skills that children learn.
It begins very early in life, well before counting and number identification, and researchers believe that even infants and animals have quantitative abilities.
There are three levels, or stages of quantification and preschool teachers need to know where their children are in the progression in those stages so that they may present play situations and activities that support the abilities of the children.
Many adults think of counting as the first step or only way to quantify, but children being to solve mathematical problems well before they can count and name numbers.
The three stages of quantification are as follows:
Global Quantification
- Making a visual or tactile approximation of a set and attempting to match it with a like set.
- For example, if a teach makes a tower of blocks, the child may make a tower of the same blocks of approximately the same height.
- There is no regard to the actual number of blocks, rather more to what appears to be a similar amount.
One-to-One Correspondence
- selecting a single item in a set to match with another single item, such as giving each item a single numeral name.
- For example, when given a row of twelve blocks to copy, the child may line up their own set right next to the original, or by frequently looking back at the original set to assure that they are matching the exact same amount, one for one.
Counting
- Counting the items of an original set and then counting out the exact same amount for a matching set.
- For example, when looking at a pile of blocks, the child may separate the blocks and count them, assigning each one a number to find the total number of blocks, before attempting to count out their own matching set.
We created a daily preschool math curriculum that covers everything you’ll need to teach preschool math! We also offer the units available for individual purchase. Our daily math lessons in counting to 20, covers counting from 0-5, 0-10, and 0-20.
When your preschoolers are ready for early addition and subtraction, we have a great unit full of centers and daily lessons!
Preschool Counting Books
Our library is loaded with counting books for preschool and kindergarten. Using literacy to teach math is such a beautiful example of how all academics are entwined together and these storybooks spotlight math in the real world.
Counting to 20 Books for Kindergarten
Learning to count is exciting when we are able to infuse it with beautiful illustrations and fun storylines. We’ve rounded up some of our favorite counting to 20 books for kindergarten and preschool!
Quantifying Activities for Preschoolers
It’s important to teach quantification through play because that’s how preschoolers learn best! We have included some great quantifying activities that encourage children to quantify objects logically and to compare sets.
Apple Drop Counting
This is apple drop counting game is an excellent example of quantifying in preschool!
As children learn about composing numbers up to ten, they grab some red buttons (without counting) and drop them onto the apple tree. Using what they know about number patterns, they might see three on one side and 2 on the other.
They are using number patterns to make sense of how many in total. This game is also an early introduction to simple addition and subtraction!
Valentine’s Button Drop Counting
Just like the apple drop counting game above, this game can be used in the same drop format which helps kids quantify the amount they see. It also includes a graphing sheet to model graphing one heart eraser at a time and comparing colors to learn about more and less.
Subitizing Games with Free Printable Subitizing Cards
These free printable subitizing cards can be used in a variety of ways and games so they are versatile and easy to use for a quick transition or math center.
Children match and/or quickly identify without counting how many each card shows. Kids love the challenge and they are building number sense at the same time!
Number Sense Skills
Number sense encompasses a broad understanding of the concept of numbers. It refers to a child’s fluidity in numbers, including:
- quantification (knowledge of specific quantities)
- number identification (naming numbers)
- number order and sequencing
- counting with one-to-one correspondence (each number corresponds to one specific quantity)
- cardinality of number (recognizing that the last number said when counting is the number of total objects)
- conservation of number (understanding that the number of objects is always the same even when rearranged)
- subitizing (automatic recognition of set quantities)
- composing numbers (addition)
- decomposing numbers (subtraction)
- understanding of mathematical symbols ( +, -, ÷, x, = )
These 10 number sense skills are developed over the course of early math instruction and certainly not all packed into only the preschool years.
Number Sense Manipulatives for Preschool
When diving into numbers, it’s so important to have hands-on math manipulatives to help children manipulate the numbers for better understanding. These are a few must-haves for my classroom and I hope you find them valuable for your preschoolers too!
What is Number Sense in Preschool?
Number sense in preschool is all about getting comfortable with numbers! Learning to name numbers, count with one to one correspondence, and recognizing that numbers have value.
Here are some great number sense activities to use with your preschoolers.
Five Number Identification Preschool Activities
From puzzles to clip cards, these number identification activities are a great way to build number sense and work on early math concepts.
Number Sense Puzzles for Numbers 1-5
These number sense puzzles model showing numbers in 4 different ways and are a great way to introduce quantifying to your preschoolers! Perfect for model during circle time and then putting into a math center for children to challenge themselves.
More Number Sense Activities
I’m Sarah, an educator turned stay-at-home-mama of five! I’m the owner and creator of Stay At Home Educator, a website about intentional teaching and purposeful learning in the early childhood years. I’ve taught a range of levels, from preschool to college and a little bit of everything in between. Right now my focus is teaching my children and running a preschool from my home. Credentials include: Bachelors in Art, Masters in Curriculum and Instruction.
[…] here’s the kicker. Math has five disciplines. Number Sense, Algebra, Geometry, Measurement, and Data Analysis and Probability. All five of those disciplines […]