The winter and spring months of the Kindergarten Bridges program feature lessons in counting, comparing, sorting, measuring, and early computation. The first 14 lessons (Sessions 57 through 71) deal primarily with reading, writing, and understanding numbers to 20. Many sessions involve Work Place games and activities in which children race to see who can be first to collect a given number of cubes or pennies, or count how many objects or pictures there are in a particular collection. In all of these activities, double ten- frames or pictures of Unifix cubes stacked into sets of 10 with subgroups of 5 clearly marked are used to help children develop a sense of number that includes these important landmarks. Although many youngsters will continue to count one by one throughout the year and beyond, having objects and pictures consistently organized into groups of 5 or 10 provides students with opportunities to generate alternative counting strategies.
Faubion School