Families Connect (Week 7) – Number Names

Car Registration plates, bus timetables, road signs, clocks, phones, house numbers, post boxes, shop windows, remote controls, cereal boxes, food packaging, microwaves, televisions.…These are just a small illustration of the places that our children can see numbers every day. And by taking the opportunity to point out these numbers and name them, we can really help our children when they are learning to count.

But even more than this, we can help our children learn the names for numbers. Again, this is something that we as adults probably all take for granted. But how many times have you heard children count and refuse to include, 11, 12 or 15! This is because not only is counting complex, but our names for numbers are quite confusing too. Sadly, as you will come to see, there are no shortcuts when it comes to learning number names and not much logic either, so it is just something that our children have to learn. The more they hear and see numbers, the easier it is for them to learn them.

So, what’s so difficult about our number names? Consider the following oddities:

* How does “eleven” and “twelve” relate to “one” and “two” – and compare this to “four” and “fourteen” which is far more logical?

* Why are 13 and 15 not “threeteen” and “fiveteen”? And why are 30 and 50 are not “threety” and “fivety”?

* Why are teen numbers spoken with the unit number first but numbers in the 20s, 30s etc are spoken with the tens number (which comes first!) first – i.e. 14 (1 ten then 4 units) is “fourteen” but 43 (4 tens then 3 units) is “forty-three”?

* Why do we say “one hundred and eleven” for 111, but “Twenty-one” (not twenty and one) for 21?

As we found in Families Connect, the more you think about the English way of naming numbers, the more complicated it gets! And this is what our children are trying to tackle, at the same time as learning the order of numbers and also that they represent a value for something. It is no wonder they find this all a bit confusing! So, any games you can play, any chance you can take to spot and name numbers, to count things when you are out and about really are the least, we can do for imposing such a crazy system on our poor children!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *