It is during the Foundation Stage that children develop a growing understanding of number. To support children's counting skills, early years practitioners need to be aware of how children acquire their understanding of number and the type of environment and activity in which learning can occur.
Three of the early learning goals relate to children's ability to recognise and use number:
* Say and use number names in order in familiar contexts * Count reliably up to ten everyday objects * Recognise numerals 1-9.
Learning and using number names is important for children, as it is simply not possible to count without knowing at least some number names. Knowing some number names is the first stage in young children's development of counting skills, and practitioners need to look out for the signs of their growing understanding (see box).
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