Abstraction is my seventh blog post in a series about the Counting Principles. These principles are helpful when developing children’s number sense. It’s not enough for them to learn to count by rote, they have to develop a strong foundation of numbers and counting.

You can see the other Counting Principle blog posts here.

What is Abstraction?

It is knowing that no matter what you are counting, how you count stays the same. The objects’ traits (size, shape, colour, etc.) doesn’t matter. This also includes counting non-concrete materials (characters in a story, sounds, etc)

Why is Abstraction important?

When students develop abstraction skills, they are deepening their number sense skills .

Activities

Abstraction is easy to work on with concrete objects– buttons, vehicles, blocks, balls.

To challenge students, using sounds can be a fun way to reinforce this skill.

Abstraction Cards

Laminate these counting cards, and have students use different objects to match the count on the card.

If you would like to use these cards, they are a free download in my Resource Library (if you do not have he password, sign up for my newsletter and it will be sent to you):

Counting

If your students need more practice with their one-to one correspondence, this pack will have them practicing in so many different ways:

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