Depth 1 · 34 s
The last word
Counting is matching - one counting word for each thing, in a fixed order - and the last word tells you how many, whatever order you count in. Up to four you can see it at a glance.
About this video
How do you know there are five things on a table? You count them, and counting is more clever than it looks. You touch each thing once, and say one counting word for each, always in the same order: one, two, three, four, five. Each thing gets exactly one word, so the things and the words are matched one to one. The last word you say is the answer: it tells you how many there are.
This short animation counts five dots, then counts them again in a different order. The words land on different dots, but the last word is still five, because the order you touch things in doesn't change how many there are. Then it shows something we can do without counting at all: up to about four things, you see how many at a glance. Past that, the trick is to make groups. Eight scattered dots are hard to see, but two groups of four are easy. This video goes with the Why We Count and How Many at a Glance? lessons of Numbers Level 1 on Knaph.
This video shows depth 1 of Counting.
Learn CountingTranscript
- 0:00How do you know there are five?
- 0:04Touch each one once, with one counting word for each.
- 0:10The last word tells you how many.
- 0:13Count them in another order. Still five.
- 0:18Up to four, you can see how many at a glance.
- 0:23More than that? Make groups. Four and four is eight.
- 0:29Counting is matching, one to one.