What do we want children to be able to do by the end of their Reception year?
Learning to count
Children often start school being able to say the numbers 1 - 10 (or beyond) in the correct order. However when they count objects they don't quite understand quantity and how many they have altogether.
In the children's first few weeks we teach a number a week so that the children fully understand the quantity of that number and so they are secure when counting objects.
It is also quite common for a child to touch each object as they count, but when you ask them how many altogether they say a different number. This shows us that they are not quite understanding quantity.