Your child can count. The next move isn't counting further; it's starting to look at a handful of things and see the number without counting it, then to see that number as something you can build and take apart.
The goal of this stage is a simple, powerful habit: playing with numbers. A child who plays with small amounts, combining them, splitting them, spotting "how many" at a glance, grows a feel for number that counting alone never gives.
Get this right and numbers stop being words in a list and become things you can build with. That is the foundation everything else rests on.
At first your child may still need to count to be sure, and that is exactly right; counting is the ground this is built on. What we are growing now is the confidence to trust what they see: to glance at a small group and believe the number without checking. That trust isn't taught in a sentence. It comes from time and playful repetition, meeting the same small amounts again and again until the number feels certain.
We help that along with simple tools, above all the ten frame, and two friendly landmarks: 5 and 10. In time a child sees seven not as "one, two, three…seven" but as "five and two," or "three short of ten."
That is the whole idea: turning a pile of things into a number you can see, hold and break apart. I call it groupitise, because you are teaching a child to take a group and make it a number.
Tap a number, and switch how you see it.
Free games and activities for building with groups, a few playful minutes at a time.