Number sense is a quality a teacher can decide if a student has or has not required.  Students will develop their number sense throughout their schooling career – from early childhood, through primary school.  Number incorporates many skills including the basics of recognising and classifying numbers, comparing and counting numbers both forwards and backwards and through skip counting. 

 

When I was researching for information on counting and place value, I realised how important these two skills are at having a solid foundation for understanding number to be able to complete other mathematical tasks.  I have had the opportunity of working with my eldest son with maths from foundation – now (year four).  This experience showed me that a lot of my math understanding I learnt in early years I take for granted.  We needed to go back to the beginning and insure he understood number and was on his way to develop strong number sense. 

 

On my youtube account I have shown some of the activities I have worked on with my son to help build his foundation of number.  It is important for students to understand that our number system uses a base-10 system.  This is required to be able to count and work out computations involving 2-digit numbers and beyond. 

 

As my eldest has Autism Spectrum Disorder, and loves numbers, we spend a lot of time talking about numbers and how they relate.  We have enjoyed working on working on fractions which is also a part of number.  Before this unit,  I was unaware how young children could be exposed to fractions and how beneficial it was for them to build upon over time .  On top of using number sense with my boys, I require it to add the grocery item costs up on the list and bills.  How do you use number in your home?