Understanding the notion of the number is important for children in their perception of the world around them, as well as for understanding of mathematical notions in the future. As many first-grade students in elementary school find it hard to understand the notion of the number, owing to its abstract nature, it is important to understand the number first through realistic materials. Although visual perception is predominantly used for solving mathematical problems, we should not forget the other senses when learning the notion of the number. For example, the perception which is extremely important to the blind and the partially sighted, but also to the students in the regular programme, is the tactile perception. The aim of the paper is to study the documents for teaching mathematics in the first grade of elementary school and establish the basis for a tactile approach to the notion of the number. The results show that although Croatian textbooks do not contain tasks for tactile comprehension of numbers, a large number of tasks may be modified and converted in that sense. Among the studied textbooks, only the German textbook had tasks that were directly intended for learning by using the senses. The tasks clearly show that, besides vision, the students can aproach the notion of the number through touch and hearing. Tactile approach to the notion of the number is a straightforward and interesting approach to teaching numbers that includes work with a sense often neglected in teaching mathematics. In the framework of the paper, it was suggested to introduce the tactile approach into the initial number learning in class. Both teachers and class moderators may find it demanding to create different tasks, look for materials and designate enough time for this kind of learning, but such a class may be very motivating and useful for students.