Of all the math skills that children will acquire, counting is one that most children will already be doing before they reach school-age.

Rote counting (or saying numbers in a sequence from memory) is what most children will be able to do, but this does not mean that they can actually determine the amount in a collection.

In order to help our students develop an actual understanding of numbers and how counting relates to real life, we did a hands-on activity with jewels aimed at developing their one-to-one correspondence.

By placing a certain amount of jewels onto a rainbow fish diagram (counting as they did so), participants were able to make a connection between the spoken numeral and a concrete amount.