One of the reasons that we are able to count a number of objects quickly is that we recognise the pattern. Dice patterns are an obvious example of this - we recognise the pattern of four dots in a square with the fifth in the middle as 5 without actually counting them. Children starting maths do not have this recognition and it is a god idea to ask them to arrange numbers of shapes into patterns. These three pages do this with the numbers from 3 to 10. Patterns in numbers