The Concept of Number
In the preschool period, many children can count up to 10, 50 or 100 without errors. But this counting is rote counting, and this does not mean that they have gained the concept of numbers and operations. Because memorizing is the counting of number names in the same way as learning a rhythm (Decker 1990, Kennedy and Tipps 1997).
Preschool children gaining the concept of number; The ability to classify similar objects into classes and groups, that is, the ability to classify objects, the ability to arrange between the differences of objects, namely the ability to sort, to understand the concept of one-to-one matching that expresses numerical equality, and to gain number conservation, which indicates that the amount will always remain the same regardless of the spatial arrangement of the objects to be counted.
For this reason, in order to gain the basic number concept in preschool children, teachers should include plenty of classification, sorting and one-to-one matching studies. For this purpose, the teacher may ask the child to match the groups of objects exactly in number and count and say which one is less, more and the same number.
He can tell the child to match groups one to one and count (Hohmann and Weikart 2000).
The acquisition of the number concept shows a significant increase from 5 years to 8 years depending on age (Bisanz et al. 1995).
Teaching the concept of number should first be started with groups of numbers less than five and five (Fuson et al. 1985, Sophian 1988, Fisher and Beckey 1990) and use concrete objects, then use pictures (Nair and Pool 1991).
Matching game and find your partner with another name is one of the most educational games among preschool activities. This game helps children to improve their concentration, focus, reasoning and understanding skills and therefore their memory. This situation has been scientifically proven.
We have prepared a nice activity for you to develop your children in terms of learning numbers and matching. Wishing you a fun time. 🙂