Parts of the Body: How Many?

Six cards run down the right of this kindergarten page, each with a photograph-style picture, a short question and one empty dashed box. The questions on the sheet shown are how many mouths, fingers, noses, eyes, legs and arms. The answers are one, one, two, two, two and ten, so two cards take a single numeral, three take two and one takes a two-digit number. A full-length figure stands on the left of the page for reference, though the instruction asks the child to count on their own body instead.

Counting body parts is where number and self-knowledge meet at five, and the mix of ones, twos and a ten is deliberate: a child who has learned that body parts come in pairs meets a card where they do not. The fingers card is the one to talk through, because it needs counting in a way the others do not, and because the small picture beside it shows a single raised finger rather than a whole hand.

One sheet, six cards, six numerals. It works well standing up, with the class touching each part as they count, and it is short enough to finish in one sitting. This is the number face of the body family; the twos card is followed up on the which-come-in-twos sheet, where the same idea becomes a sorting task instead of a count.