A parent shows his child four pencils. He places them in a row in front of her and says "one" as he points to the first pencil, "two" as he points to the second one, "three" as he points to the third one, and "four" as he points to the fourth. He repeats this for the child. Then, with an encouraging smile he asks, "Now give me two pencils!" The child picks up the second pencil in the law and gives it to him. She is quite baffled when the parent says, "No child! I said two pencils. Here (adding another pencil), now they are two." "Are /they?", wonders the child. "But did not he just say that that pencil was 'two' ?"

Why do you think the child in the example above was confused ?

Think about what happens when we set number names and objects in one-to one correspondence. We use the (number names as temporary labels for the objects. In the example-above, the pencil has nothing in common with the number "two"; it is just the second object in the ordered row of objects. But when we say "Give me two pencils", we expect the child to mentally separate the label "two" from the second pencil, and then dissociate it with any two pencils. This way of using number names in two ways is quite confusing to a child who is just beginning to deal with numbers. How can we sort out this confusion?

Why don't you try an exercise now?