Children learn to count up to five and then up to ten quite easily, just like they learn a rhyme. But learning the value of each number takes time and needs to be linked to real experiences.
Once children can count up to ten, the teens and larger numbers are sometimes introduced quickly by counting, with too few concrete experiences for real understanding. Often, it is with the introduction of these larger numbers that children begin to lose confidence as they only know the number word and are not sure 'how many' the word represents. It is quite common to see children struggling to write numbers like 17 or 25 in tens and unit columns.
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