One-To-One Correspondence Despondent – Learning to Count, Or Not
Summary: Making your kid count jelly beans when they don’t understand one-to-correspondence is a great way to make yourself feel stupid.
It’s something we take for granted, and we can’t recall ever not being able to do it, but without it it’s impossible to do any sort of math or even tell time. I’m talking one-to-one correspondence of course.
In a nutshell, one-to-correspondence is the understanding that numbers correspond to objects. When someone says “one” you should have a clear picture of just one object. Not two, not three – just one. If you add another, you know that is now two and can clearly picture two and only two objects.
Now just because a kid can count to ten, or even a hundred, doesn’t mean they know what ten is, or they can count a hundred objects. You can recite your numbers from route without any understanding of what it means. This is generally how kids first learn their numbers – with route memory. Continue reading
