Shake. Spill. Build. Color. Write.

At first glance, it looked like a simple game. Our Kindergarteners shook a handful of five counters, spilled them onto the table, moved each counter into a square on their sheet of paper, colored in boxes corresponding with the counter color (red or yellow), and wrote down their work. Five neat steps: shake, spill, build, color, write.

But in reality, something much bigger was happening.

This activity is intentionally designed to do far more than practice counting. It builds one-to-one correspondence and progresses along a well-researched concrete → representational → abstract (CRA) path: children handle real objects, represent them with marks and pictures, and then record ideas with numerals and equations. This sequence is foundational in high-quality early math and reflects what decades of research have shown: students build lasting mathematical understanding when they move from concrete experiences to representations to abstract symbols, rather than memorizing procedures alone. 

As they engage in this work, students are also embarking on a journey of acquiring mathematical academic language—using precise terms like counter, and/add, and make/equals, total—while simultaneously developing core mathematical practices: moving from manipulatives to number concepts and then to written symbols. What begins as noticing and building with 2 yellow and 3 red counters, then expressing that in familiar spoken language (“___ and ___ make ___”), eventually grows into representing the same thinking symbolically as 2 + 3 = 5. This intentional sequencing, grounded in research from organizations like the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and the National Academies, ensures students aren’t just “doing math”—they’re learning to think, talk, and reason mathematically.

It’s also a story of how children learn to think.

In this case, our teacher, Ginger Brooker, brings a Reggio-inspired lens to her work, even when teaching math. What does this look like? When one child completed the accompanying math sheet, she noticed one student chose to color four boxes in a single sweep—explaining, “It’s faster than coloring one square at a time.” For many adults, this student’s comment represents an interesting insight. For Ms. Brooker, however, it’s evidence of how her student’s mind is working right now; it’s an efficiency strategy, a pattern she’s testing, a disposition toward ‘faster’. This student revealed an emerging sense of efficiency, strategy, and metacognition—so we document it, name it, and design future learning experiences to extend it. In Reggio terms, we’re listening to one of her hundred languages and responding with materials and questions that honor it; in Project Zero terms, we make her thinking visible and press it forward with routines like What makes you say that? and How else might you show it? In this way, we purposefully guide learning while affirming her way of making meaning—not just for the next task, but as a throughline for future learning—inquiry-based explorations that are the heartbeat of learning in our classrooms.

At another table, a child’s counters slipped under the table. A classmate slid down to retrieve them. In some classrooms, that might be labeled “off-task.” In ours, it’s read first as agency, empathy, and community—then guided back into the mathematical goal. Our stance is inquiry-first within clear boundaries: safety and respect are non-negotiable, but our first move is to understand the child’s lens before redirecting. That’s how we preserve curiosity while building self-regulation.

Executive function, built into the routine

This five-step routine also supports executive function (EF)—the brain’s self-management system that helps children hold information in mind, resist impulsive responses, and shift flexibly. In this activity, children:

• Use working memory to remember the sequence of steps and their running total,
• Practice inhibitory control by resisting the urge to skip ahead, grab extra counters, or color outside the agreed frame, and
• Exercise cognitive flexibility as they move from building with counters to representing quantities with marks and then switching mental sets to write numerals and simple equations.

These EF components—working memory, self-regulation, and flexible thinking—are well established in early learning research. Each time children engage in playful, structured routines like this one, they are developing and exercising these essential executive function skills, which support not only academic learning but also the resilience, focus, and adaptability essential to healthy development across every stage of life.

Fine motor and graphomotor—what we’re strengthening and why it matters

Alongside the thinking work, children refine:

• Fine motor skills (small-muscle control in hands and fingers for tasks like grasping counters, stabilizing the paper, and controlled coloring), and
• Graphomotor skills (the handwriting-specific integration of visual-motor control, motor planning, and letter/number formation needed for efficient written output).

These aren’t side benefits; they’re part of how young children access and show their thinking. Strengthening these capacities increases stamina and clarity in recording math ideas (today’s boxes and numerals, tomorrow’s number lines and explanations).

Listening to children’s “hundred languages”

Rooted in the Reggio Emilia philosophy of the Hundred Languages, our teachers don’t stop at correct answers. We attend to how children communicate ideas—through words, drawings, gestures, numbers, and actions—and we design next steps from that evidence. The result is instruction that is both responsive and rigorous: the science of early mathematics integrated with the art of teaching young people growing into themselves—complex, capable, and deeply worthy of being seen.

Our promise isn’t only strong numeracy. It’s mathematical proficiency—conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, strategic competence, adaptive reasoning, and a productive disposition—that grows in concert with executive function, language, and identity. That’s the foundation our students carry forward.

It may look simple. But if you listen closely, you’ll hear the deeper story: children whose learning is nurtured with rigor and reverence, building durable skills and confident ways of being—emerging as mathematicians, thinkers, and whole human beings prepared for whatever lies ahead.