Subitizing! Sounds like a strange term to many of us but it such an important skill for children to learn. Subitizing is the ability to recognize and identify the number of a small set of items without counting and/or the ability to visualize a number.
A good example of this is a dice. When you roll the dice your want to be able to say that is 5 or that is 4 just by looking at the dice–we just visually know what these small sets of numbers look like in any given arrangement. Another example using crackers would be that if you lay out 4 crackers you will visually know there is 4 even if I arrange them a different way.
This takes times to learn and your child will get it the more you practice.Can you imagine if we didn’t visually memorize numbers –how long it would take us us to stop and count every single time!
To DO: We were subitizing numbers 1-4 and typically for young children a small set is no bigger than 5 (but there weren’t many Legos with 5 studs)! You could start with 1 or 2 studs and sort those before you bring in more numbers. Ask your child to look at the studs and tell you as quick as possible how many studs/dots they see!
