an adding to 10 maths resource

Today T's lovely teacher gave me some animal strips to bring home to talk to him about. He's been off sick 2 days this week and when he went back yesterday he found his day a bit hard going. He was asked to draw the strips 1- 10 at school, something he found tricky at the time. She's super supportive and knows that I'm happy to follow up things at home with him, so I'll share what we did together.

Because it was after a day at school I thought I'd make it a bit easier to have him use stickers for this. I bought them at the 123 Mart. If you wanted to make these this too you would need to choose stickers carefully making sure that there were 10 of one type of sticker, 9 of another, 8 of another and so on. You could use any really, small animals, plain dots- whatever you find.

I cut yellow card into strips, each space is about 1.5cm square. There's a dotted line after 5 to help them learn what 5 looks like. In the following video they use a 1-10 strip, you could easily make one but we didn't- we used the 10 strip at the top and made combinations of other strips underneath it 9+1, 8+2, 7+3 etc.

As you can see from the photos, he also liked making 1-10 'steps' : )

These are the original ( very cute) Animal strips we based ours on, available to buy at Every Educaid for $11.99

Here's a video that explains how to use them to help learn addition facts to 10
http://nzmaths.co.nz/sites/default/files/Animations/animal_strips3.swf

Here's a lesson copied from the NZ maths website.

In this session students are introduced to animal strips as a way to communicate addition equations.

1. Show the students the animal strips. Ask the students: how many animals are on the strip? (6)
2. Students should be able to recognise the patterns and answer instantly, rather than counting each animal. Show the students that the dotted line after the 5th animal can help them recognise the number.





3. Show the students an animal strip. Ask the students: how many animals are on the strip? (7)
4. Show the students another animal strip and ask the students: how many animals are there altogether?





5. Encourage the students to count on. i.e. 8, 9.
6. Write under the animal strip the number sentence” 7 and 2 makes 9”.
7. Make copies of the animal strips and ask pairs or individual students to make their own addition equations. Encourage them to count on as they add the animals. Then ask the students to write the number sentence underneath.
8. Give students animal strips appropriate for their knowledge stage, for example facts to 5, facts with 5, doubles, or facts to 10.

Five little men in flying saucers

M sings this song at school. She had the idea that we make up some props to act out the song with. T had the idea to use ice block sticks and the 'world' from his toy box. I drew and cut out the flying saucers from some silver card we had. The kids drew spacemen on white stickers and stuck them on the saucers.

We adapted the song to be 5 little men in their flying saucers.... here's a clip of the original song and some pictures of the fun we had. We also made a movie but after trying to upload it 4 times with no luck I've given up!

 

a counting game to make

I saw this at work today and thought it would be easy to make at home. I used an old birthday card, some yellow card and clear book cover. Make a plate and cake shape, cut out candle shapes and add little flames to the top of the candles. Lastly, cover each candle and the cake and plate with book cover. 

The idea is to tell your child that it's someone's birthday and say how old they'll be. They then have to put that amount of candles on the cake. This is a little too easy for my pretty on to it 4.5 year old but it can be adapted to make it a bit more of a challenge or for talking about the meaning of the words younger and older,  eg:

" If the person is 7, how many more candles would you have to put on for when they're 10?"

" This person is one year older than 5"

" This person is 2 years younger than 8"

" How many candles would there be on the cake if the person was older than 7 but younger than 9?"

The 3 year old loved blowing the candles of the cake in between turns too : )

home made learning games

I made this number wheel today, I used the length of red and black sample tape that came with my dymo label maker ( I LOVE that thing!). Both children enjoyed matching the numbered pegs to the corresponding 'dots' on the circle. I'll make more learning games like this, I got the idea from Pinterest and have a board set up for collecting Montessori inspired activities and another for School activities. I particularly like the idea of making more Montessori inspired resources. The kids respond really well to them because they're 'hands on, inspired by practical life and lots are self correcting. They're also made with natural materials and are brightly coloured- win win! If you'd like to, you can read more about Montesori here: About Montessori.

"I work with my hands and learn by doing. What I hear I forget, what I do I remember."

-Maria Montessori

simple bead counting toy

I saw these in a classroom I was in today so on the way home I flew into Spotlight and bought two packets of beads. I thought it would make a perfect 'after tea and bath but too early for bedtime' activity for Mae and Thomas. It's really easy, just untwist the wire at the hanger part and thread the beads on. When the beads are on, just re- twist the wire part back together. I used 4 different coloured beads so that the kids could see lots of 5 and 10 and later on use it count in 2s, 5s and 10s.