LeFevre – mathematics and numeracy

Early mathematics skills for young children is a good umbrella term for a lot of the kinds of activities and knowledge that we would like young children to have about mathematics. Numeracy refers to a sort of subcomponent of that. The part to do with numbers. I would say that quite a large component of early mathematics knowledge does involve numbers.  

It involves quantities, it involves verbal labels for numbers, it involves learning the symbol that goes with the particular quantities. So knowing what the number 4 looks like and being able to name it and so on. So numeracy is not a terrible way to talk about early mathematics but it’s only a part of all the other kinds of mathematical skills that we would like young children to learn.