Four-year-old Raj is helping you to gather leaves and stones. As he hunts around for materials, you remind him that there are ten children in class today, so he needs to collect ten leaves and ten stones. He sorts the materials into piles and counts the number of items in each pile. He realises that he has enough stones but is short of leaves. You help him collect four more.
Raj needs a lot of cognitive skills to keep on track – he has to remember the rule of ten throughout the task, and he has to pay attention while he counts, avoiding distractions. He has to switch between collecting and counting to keep track of how many of each resource he has. Once he has counted his piles, he has to work out how many more of each resource he needs. It’s not as simple as ‘just’ the maths skills of knowing numbers and comparing amounts.
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