As students begin to work with larger quantities, they need to be able to successfully count using the stable order principal (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …), have one-to-one correspondence, and have "keeping track" strategies. It is important to provide students with opportunities to experience multiple formats of numbers in order to increase subitizing skills.

Subitizing is the ability to identify small quantities without counting each individual object. This helps students to develop fluency with number and to begin to think about number combinations. (Dot arrangements on dice and dominoes are examples) . Students also benefit from visually identifying and recalling nontraditional arrangements (ten-frame arrangements and dot cards). Dot cards can represent quantities in arrangements different from those on dice and dominoes. For example, 6 may be shown in a variety of ways including:

When subitizing larger quantities, it becomes necessary for students to visually identify "parts" that make up the whole, an important step in developing number sense and number concepts as well as the part-part-total concept.