Set the table

Teaching focus:

This resource focuses on young children's understanding of number. It aims to help children establish the connections between different ways of representing number (Askew, 1999). Depending on how the resource is used, it can foster children to develop number recognition, number identification, or number representation skills.

How to play:
Each child is given a plate and a place-mat, and only one of the items from the following list:

• fork (contains numbers represented by numerals )
• knife (containsnumbers represented by dots set out according to the domino pattern)
• dessert spoon (contains the numbers represented by tally marks set out in groups of five)
• tea-spoon (contains numbers represented by words)
• a certain number of donuts (representing the "how-many" of the number)

The children are then asked to find the other representations of the number they have been given and set the table. Below is an example of different ways of representing the number five.