Subitize while #TMWYK

I so wish I would have had my camera at the ready this morning at the breakfast table!  I need to take Christopher Danielson’s advice and get Google Glass, but that’s a little out of my price range.  So I’m going to recreate what my kids said using the visuals below, but I can’t recapture the cool expressions and their tone of voice…they had me gut rolling this morning.  I had the bills out on the table and along with the bills were stamps.  My daughter grabbed them and said “Mom, you’re almost out of stamps…you only have 5 left.”  Of course, I saw the opportunity to Talk Math With Your Kids (TMWYK) and had to ask “How do you know there are 5?”  Here is how she and her older brother subitized (or instantly recognized how many without counting).

How my 5 year old daughter saw 5:

How my 6.75 year old son saw 5:

The ability to subitize allows kids to see a set instead of individual pieces.  Kids get lots of counting opportunities, but some kids have trouble getting past seeing objects as individual pieces and seeing a whole set. For example, when children count out a set of objects:

They attach a number to each object like this:

But then if you ask them to show you 5, most young children will point to the 5th item in the sequence.

Five is a set of 5 things, not the 5th item.  Having kids subitize helps them see a whole set instead of counting individually.