There are five principles of counting that had been suggested by German and Galistel (1978):
The one-to-one principle
This principle involves two important processes of “partitioning” and “tagging”. Partitioning refers to children transferring the uncounted objects to the counted one while tagging refers to the action of not using the counted objects in the counting sequence (Marmasse, Bletsas and Marti, 2000, p.3). For example, after counting the first toy, it is put into a basket and will not be counted again. Other than that, children match up objects with correspondent amount such as a pen and a pencil is correspondent to each other as both carry the same unit amount which is one.
The stable-order principle
This principle refers to children being able to count in a stable manner, which is in a repeated order. For example, the child might count three objects stating "one, three, four" and four objects by stating "one, three, four, five"( Marmasse, Bletsas and Marti, 2000, p.3).
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| Counting on a number line is as simple as 1-2-3 |
The cardinal principle
This principle reflects on the ability of children to understand that the last object that is counted in a collection holds a special meaning, in which it represents the total number of objects in that collection and indicates it is the end of the count and is called the numerosity of the set of objects (Marmasse, Bletsas and Marti, 2000, p.3)
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| Counting on a number line is as simple as 1-2-3 |
The abstraction principle
Children are able to able to realise that counting can be applied to different kinds of items, whether it is tangible and moveable or abstract things like sounds and actions (Marmasse, Bletsas and Marti, 2000).
The order-irrelevance principle
