On Tuesday, as we begin to move away from geometry and into number and number sense, we read the book How Did Numbers Begin? A few pages into the book it gave us this situation:
Imagine that you are living before numbers were invented. One day, while picking berries, you see a group of animals. It is important for the hunters to know about them, and you run to tell them. How can you tell them you saw seven animals? Remember, you know nothing about numbers or counting.
What would you do? Each of us used our problem solving skills to come up with at least on solution. Some of used sticks or pebbles to represent the animals. Others of us crushed up the berries to create an ink which we used on bark to draw circles to represent the animals. Many other ideas were offered, but all of them relied on the idea of matching. As we read on in the book we found out that matching was one of the first important steps in the invention of numbers.
