What Comes After One?

Children know a great deal of mathematics before they come to school. They have a variety of ways of interpreting and solving problems about quantities, but of course there are wide differences in how effective they are. Counting appears to play a central role in the child's mathematics learning during the early years, it generally develops before school but greatly improves during the first two years at school. Children make up mathematics-they construct mathematical knowledge. Following on from work by Steffe and others at the University of Georgia teachers can find out what types of counting children have invented and adopted, and so take
advantage of what they can already do.