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Kindergartners Talk About Counting
The Counting Jar
Introduction
This video shows Lillian Pinet facilitating a discussion with her kindergarten class
about an activity called the Counting Jar from the Investigations in Number, Data,
and Space curriculum (Russell et al. 2008o). During this discussion, Lillian high-
lights students’ counting strategies and involves the whole group in helping a stu-
dent recognize and correct a counting mistake.
Counting is the main focus of the number work students do in kindergarten
and is an important part of the work students do in first and second grade.
Students come to kindergarten with a wide range of experiences and understand-
ing of numbers and counting. All students need many opportunities to count, to
observe counting, and even to talk about counting to make sense of and learn the
action, concepts, and skills of counting.
The Counting Jar is an activity in which students work on multiple aspects of
counting. The activity begins with the teacher placing a set of 5 to 20 objects
(cubes, golf balls, plastic animals, and so on) inside a clear jar. A few students at
a time work on the three different parts of this activity:
- Students individually count the number of objects in the jar.
- They make a representation on paper to show how many objects are in the
jar. - They create a set of other objects with the same number of objects as in the
jar. This equivalent set is stored on a paper plate or in a plastic bag or cup.
After everyone in the class has a chance to do a particular counting jar, the stu-
dents often share their representations and their counting strategies in a whole-
group discussion.
In many classrooms, this activity is continued throughout the year with the
teacher varying the number and types of objects each time. As students do this
activity throughout the year, it supports their growth in understanding counting
and developing their counting skills. It gives them an opportunity to independ-