Number sense is the secret weapon for children that excel in mathematics
Many things that we take to be obvious are a result of mental modals that we build as a result of consistent exposure. It is this lack of mental models that when a baby presented with two cakes will not be able to tell which one is bigger. This distinction becomes obvious as the baby gains more exposure. The ability to quickly see solutions based on persistence exposure to numbers and mathematics is what we call number sense. It is number sense that you use to estimate the number of people in a room without counting. It is number that engineers use to tell the distance between two points without measuring!
Most babies will not tell which piece of cake is bigger due lack of number sense
Number sense comes with experience; just like a good footballer knows where the goal is even when he is facing the opposite direction. Many patterns exist in numbers and come naturally after continuous practice. For instance, the reason why most people will quickly workout ten minus four to be six (ie 10 – 4 = 6) is because they have developed a number sense for sums of ten.
It is number sense that a shopkeeper uses to workout balances and prices at the blink of an eye. Classroom mathematics, children spend much of their time dividing, adding, multiplying and subtracting. A learner with good number sense will accurately complete these tasks in a much shorter time.
Good number sense cannot be gained by using standard print textbooks, because a learner can easily exhaust all questions at the end of the chapter without much variability. This limitation with print textbooks is similar to that of an adult that has been exposed to limited environments. Digital learning tools are very handy in building robust number sense.
