Children\'s Mathematics

Figure 6.9 Karl’s tables

I had asked the children to help make an inventory of furniture and resources in

the classroom to help the head teacher who was doing an audit. Karl, 4.9, decided

to count the tables. He used a linear arrangement although the width of the

paper meant that he had to continue his drawings of tables below the first ones

he had drawn. Like Joe’s spider (Figure 2.3), Karl has shown something of the

appearance of ‘lots of legs’ which may have included the legs of chairs beneath

the tables.

When he’d finished, Karl counted the tables and then re-counted, putting a

mark on each table he’d drawn, with his pen. At the top he wrote his

approximation of ‘10’ and I wrote what he said beneath it (Figure 6.9).

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