Games are a fun way of practising skills. This set of thirty laminated domino cards featuring footballers aims to improve immediate number quantity recogntion without reliance on one model of number pattern as on a dice or domino.
Number is an abstract idea – it doesn’t have a colour or shape though many teaching tools would have children believe this. Children learn to count by rote, repetitiously saying the numbers one to ten. Yet, we are born with a number template for quantities up to 4 which should make it easy to identify which is the greater quantity in up to 5 items. In the creation of the decimal number system, the recognition of number quantity up to 5 without needing to count is useful. Ten can then be visualised as two fives, six is one five and one more, nine is two fives less one etc. Continual playing of this game should reduce reliance on one by one counting and encourage more efficient recognition of quantities. Five will always be five whether the footballers are positioned closely together or far apart, and whether they are in a line or in a cluster.
