According to Wikipedia, subitizing "refers to the rapid, accurate, and confident judgments of number performed for small numbers of items." If you look at a picture of three stars, you don't have to count the stars because you know there are three stars just by looking at them. Your speed and accuracy decrease as the number of stars increases.
Today I had a little girl hold up three fingers, but when I asked her how many she paused to count them. Curious, I asked her to show me two fingers. She had to count, "1 2" before she could show me two fingers. She had to count for 4 and 5 as well.
Learning to count objects is part of Kindergarten. When a child is unable to count objects at the Kindergarten screening, I'm not too concerned. But I have never had a student who had to count in order to show me a certain number of fingers. Now I'm curious to know what is the typical age to subitize fingers? I think of two and three year olds who are able to show how old they are with fingers. Do they truly understand that those fingers represent 2 or 3? Some do.
When my nephew was a toddler he was allowed to have two cookies for dessert. He would eat one quickly and then demand another cookie because he was allowed to have two cookies and now he only had one!
What does it mean that this little girl still has to count her fingers in Kindergarten? Is it truly a concern or is it developmental? I just don't know. I'm going to find some cookies.
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