Did you know there are many different types of numbers?

Your child will be learning about these as they go through the curriculum, so the list below will hopefully help you as a parent to support your child’s number knowledge journey. 

• Natural Numbers. 

Any numbers that are used for counting or ordering. These include cardinal numbers used for counting and ordinal numbers used for ordering items (e.g., third in a row). 

• Whole Numbers 

The numbers that include natural numbers and zero but are not a fraction or decimal. 

• Integers 

A counting number, zero, or the negative of a counting number but cannot be a fraction or decimal. (E.g., -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3). 

• Rational Numbers 

Numbers that can be expressed as a fraction. (E.g., 1, 4/4, 1.0). 

• Irrational Numbers. 

Numbers that cannot be expressed as a fraction. (E.g., Π, √2). 

• Real numbers 

Any number that we can think of, except complex numbers, is a real number. It includes rational and irrational numbers. 

• Complex numbers. 

A complex number is the sum of a real number and an imaginary number. https://www.cuemath.com/numbers/complex-numbers/ 

Then you also have  

• Positive numbers: real numbers that are greater than zero 
• Negative numbers: real numbers that are smaller than zero. 

• Odd numbers: Number that cannot be divided into two parts equally 
• Even numbers: numbers that can be divided by 2. 
• Prime numbers: numbers that only have two factors: 1 and itself. These numbers can only be divided by themselves and by 1. (e.g., 5, 7, 11, 13, …) 

There are a lot of numbers for your child to learn about and talking about these differences will help your child.