On the numerical competence of six-years-old children

The paper presents some of the results obtained in the course of experiments which have provided evidence of a considerable degree of numerical competence exhibited by six-years-olds and of their fairly advanced activity in discovering and dealing with arithmetical problems.The children used both counting and non-counting ways for solving arithmetical problems. They applied them elastically and interchangeably, often combining them into mutually complementary patterns of finding solutions.