Perceptual subitising is a crucial skill in developing ‘number sense’. It means the ability to instantly recognise ‘how many’ are in a group of objects without counting them – for example, when a child rolls a die and sees five dots, they immediately know there are five without having to count; five is generally the most we can expect children to instinctively ‘know’, but as soon as they can confidently identify a pair of items as being ‘two’, they are on the way to subitising success.
As older children move up to primary school, a secure understanding of subitising and cardinality (which we looked at in January) will help them with pattern recognition and addition and subtraction skills, knowing that numbers are composed of smaller groups: four is two and two.
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