COOL GAMES TO TEACH ADDITIONS UP TO 10

To master additions up to 10 is among the most important arithmetic skills of first-graders. I have found out some great games online for Mew to practice this summer.

1. MATH LINES

In this game there will be lines of balls with numbers on them. You can shoot balls to add new balls to the line. When the balls you shoot and the balls beside it add up to 10, these balls will be destroyed. You can also destroy a group of same numbered balls with only one ball. When you destroy all the balls you can proceed to the next level. If the balls reach the hole, then you lose the game. Occasionally there will be coins that appear on the screen, you can shoot the coins to get the colours of the balls sorted for a while, it will be a lot easier. Use the mouse to control the direction of the shots and click to shoot. You can also press the space bar to swap between the ball to shoot and the next ball to shoot.

I have to honestly admit that I have eventually gotten addicted to this game, of which my current record is Level 11 and over 60,000 points accumulated. My next endeavour would be Math Lines X-Factor which involves multiplication, wow!

2. MAHJONG

Nice game requires kids to work out various problems of additions and subtraction using single digits from 0 to 9 with fun of matching tiles that yield the same number. There are 3 levels: easy, medium and hard. You can also play a timed version of game. Note that not all the time you will be able to clear all the tiles, just like any normal Mahjong games. You may need to seek the help of Hint function if you get stuck during the game.

3. NUMBER TWINS

Match pairs of balls that add up to 10. Balls can only be matched if they can be connected by a line that turns at most twice. An easy Pikachu-like game where your only challenge is time.

MATH ADVENTURE FOR A KINDERGARTENER

Undoubtedly Mew needs more practice in her math skills. At her same age, Helen, her tiny Chinese girl friend, has mastered additions and subtractions for numbers up to 20 (and maybe even higher), and is always eager to solve math challenges and problems. Unfortunately, such great passion for learning seems quite strange to Mew. Teaching Mew basic maths thus becomes my priority task among other jobs including talking in French with her on a daily basis, strengthening her reading skill in mother tongue, and enriching her English vocabulary at the same time. Quite a few! 

So let's start with our math adventure!  

At first, we need to strengthen Mew's counting skill. 

She can count up to 100 already but sometimes she needs reminders at tens like 30, 40, etc. We use physical objects in our house  such as (emptied) gift cards, blocks of Lego, crayons, yogurt containers, hair clips, macaroni, bread tabs, etc. to illustrate the "one to one correspondence". I have to say that the possibilities of recycling a household item are unlimited and thus free teaching and learning tools are so easy to find around (it also teaches the kids about environmental protection notion via recycling, reusing, re-purposing). Flashcards with cute and colourful pictures to illustrate number concept prove useful for young kids too. 

I bought a Snake and Ladder game set from Dolarama for Mew to play. It is basically a counting board game so it helped her indeed to count and later to add while moving her piece across the board.  Once Mew's counting skill improved, I hang out the mat of the Snake and Ladder game onto the wall so that she could use it as a reference chart whenever she forgets a higher number on the upward or downward sequence. I also note that we could teach kids with skip counting by 2s, 5s or 10s using the same game mat (however skip counting has not yet been an official topic in our math curriculum so far; I just mentioned it while we completed some math exercises together). 

We can assess how far Mew can sequentially count and how much she knows about numerical order by asking her "What number comes after number ...?" and "What number comes just before number ...?" These questions seem to be easy but the skill is critical for understanding both addition and subtraction.

Dominoes are an extremely good math activity because, besides being a game, the matching of numbers (in the simple form of the game) is required. Children see the dots, can orally name them, and then can make the correct match. Later when kids need to learn addition, adding the dots on the dominoes is a perfect exercise.

To motivate kids with their math learning while adding some flavours to it, I established a bonus/reward system where Mew could get a fake money bill (taken from a boardgame like The Game of Life or Monopoly) whenever she provided us a correct answer to a math problem. After that, she could count her "monetary" gains and possibly noted down her records. If we replay the same number of math problems everyday, she can compare her daily records to see if she makes progress (by getting more money, lol).

At the kindergarten, they just focus on counting up to 31 so that kids can tell the date of any day during the month. I ordered a free Chapmans calendar and bought some cheap stickers and everyday Mew would put a sticker on the right date of that day and tell me the number of that cell on the calendar. 

 

One more topic we should work together soon is counting backward. Research shows that the skill of backwards counting is one that eventually develops the ability to understand subtracting by ones. It is also a visualization skill. I guess Mew can easily master that skill in no time since after we imposed more math drilling sessions at home, Mew's math competency has been apparently better and she now can add up to 20 and subtract from 10 with less errors.

We all notice that Mew prefers playing to learning (after all, who ever does not?) so we try to make her learning/drilling sessions as enjoyable as possible. We work with activity books, IQ books, flashcards and board games most of the time. If the games are fun, children don’t even realize that they are practicing learning. As the concentration ability of kids is still low, we could not expect to work with Mew for more than 15 minutes without changing activities. We also realize that repetition is very important while dealing with math and short daily sessions appear to be more effective than long sessions once in a while.

Mew needs to focus more on writing correctly numerals. It is a bit surprising but even when she can count sequentially and add or subtract numbers, she still reverses numerals such as 3, 5, 7 sometimes. More tracing exercises on a large, flat surface with the help of parents to hold kid's hand will help a lot. It is important that the kids should get the "feet" of the shape of each numeral. And it is suggested to try doing the tracing together with the kid's eyes closed and say the numerals as the parents trace it with the kid.

To teach Mew addition and subtraction, we use concrete examples. For example, "Mew has 5 balloons, Mommy gives Mew 3 more balloons. So finally how many balloon Mew has?" or "Mew has 5 candies. Mew gives Helen 2 candies (or Helen takes 2 candies from Mew). So finally how many candies Mew has left?" and so on. Mew likes such vivid examples and she even wants to create silly problems to work with. She once tried to added 5 "love" with 4 "love", lol. Initially we allow her to use objects or her fingers to reach the answer but gradually we ask her to solve the problem in her mind instead. Once she is more comfortable with single addition or subtraction problem at a time, we give her complex problems which comprise 2 addition or subtraction problem continuously. 

Regarding teaching addition, I taught her to compare immediately the 2 numbers in the addition problem then starting from the larger number, counting up with the remaining smaller number. For example, 3 + 9, she needs to know right away that 9 > 3 so she should start from 9 (considering as if she has already had 9 in her mind) and continue to count for 3 more, namely 10, 11, and 12. In this way, she does not need to count from 3 up to 12 since it would take longer to do so. I think this notion is a math characteristic called cumutativeness where 3 + 9 = 9 + 3. We also teach her some leap additions such as 2 + 2 = 4, or 5 + 5 = 10 or 10 + 10 = 20 when asking her to do a specific number of tooth brushes herself every night. For instance, my hubbie always asks her to brush her teeth 2 times of 5 for upper and lower jaws!

Simple board games are fun experience for kids to learn basic math too. Board games involve rolling dice, counting spaces ahead or backward and also keeping score. It is recommended to always ask the kid to keep track of the score and teach her how to make a tally, writing four ones next to each other and then crossing the fifth one diagonally across the others. This is a great way to teach a child to count by fives. Board games, which involve tossing of dice or spinning that result in a number of moves across a board, are excellent ways to develop sequential math understanding. These games are particularly helpful if there are backward moves as "penalties" in the game. 

To help very young kids to count up to 10 in English, visit Starfall to hear the song about Ten little snowmen or watch a cartoon about 10 little pigs on Youtube.

To count up to 12 and learn the cardinal number at the same time, check out the song of 12 days of Christmas or 12 days of Christmas - Disney Princesses on Youtube.

To learn counting backwards from 10 and subtracting by one, teach your kid to learn the song about 10 little monkeys also on Youtube or to memorize the poem about 10 little pumpkins by Megan Sheakoski

Ten Little Pumpkins Poem

by Megan Sheakoski

Ten little pumpkins growing on a vine,

One was picked and then there were nine.

Nine little pumpkins looking really great,

One was picked and then there were eight.

Eight little pumpkins counting to eleven,

One was picked and then there were seven.

Seven little pumpkins rolling through the sticks,

One was picked and then there were six.

Six little pumpkins bigger than beehives,

One was picked and then there were five.

Five little pumpkins sitting on the floor,

One was picked and then there were four.

Four little pumpkins underneath a tree,

One was picked and then there were three.

Three little pumpkins wearing little shoes,

One was picked and then there were two.

Two little pumpkins having lots of fun,

One was picked and then there was one.

One little pumpkin sitting all alone,

One was picked and then there was none.

MEW'S HAPPY WEEK

Last week was the Spring break here and Mew did not have to go to school, hoorray!!! So she just stayed at home with us and enjoyed playing games alone or with parents.

I took Mew to the Grande Bibliotheque with the aim to getting her and myself library subscription cards but unfortunately we forgot our proof of address and finally came home in vain. However, I did get a remote access to the library's electronics resources simply by filling in an online form. It is in fact more useful for us since we might not have enough time to go to the library in person but we could use the library's portal with the authentication to get the access to various interesting database. Youth Space or L'espace jeune is undoubtedly among the most favourite destination for Mew during her learning journey here.

I babysat Mew and Helen, her best friend, for two mornings. We played some simple games to reinforce their French vocabulary. Helen's French now appears to be better than Mew, mostly thanks to her special passion for learning everything and also because of Mew's 2-month absence from the French school. We will need to work with the private tutor to help Mew more in improving her French oral communication skills.

A good news is that Mew seems to become better with her mathematics addition skills after some practice with me. Although she does confuse sometimes between numbers such as 19 and 91 but generally she can presently add up to 20 without much problems. I used the game board of Snake and Ladder game to teach her to count up to 100. Then we taught her to do some basic additions using her fingers. The important thing we taught her at the beginning is the communitative characteristic of addition problems, where 5+8 = 8+5. Based on that characteristic, we instructed her to focus on the bigger number in the addition problem, thinking of it as an already-got quantity and subsequently adding the remaining amount on top of that quantity (she might use her fingers at first but would gradually wean off this habit). With a lot of repetitions, Mew becomes quicker in obtaining the result for an addition problem. We together cut out a lot of blank flash cards (in fact, tiny pieces of card) and I wrote down an addition problem in one side such as 9+4= and on the other side of the same card Mew wrote down the correct result. When finishing making the whole set, we put them all into a plastic container (a blueberry container - good habit of recycling, lol). Mew drew one card at a time, looking at the addition problem and without seeing the reverse side of the card needed to tell me the result within 5 seconds. If she was correct, she could keep her card and put it into another "Correct" container. If not, the card would be put into an "Incorrect" container and we would concentrate on practising more with those "tricky" problems. So far this method has worked fine for us. I hope that Mew would be perfect in adding up to 20 soon so that we could move to the stage of learning to fill in the missing number in an addition problem before attacking the subtraction subject.

This week we also tried a new board game: "Sorry!" game which is in fact a kind of Horse race game in our country. A simple game using cards to tell your moves instead of a dice. Mew could of course learn to count in this game. However, similar to the other board game we mentioned earlier (Destines, Le Jeu de la vie), this game is not really a strategic one and mostly based on luck. Mew won the last time we played and that motivated her very much, lol.

We also had a wonderful night at the Centre Bell to watch the Disney on Ice Princess performance. It was a marvel indeed and we did not regret spending money for this special treat for the whole family. Although our seat row was a little backward but it allowed us to have a panorama view instead. Mew enjoyed the show very much and her most favourite character was Cindrella as usual.

Oh we almost forget to mention our puppetry night show during La Nuit Blance 2 weeks ago. It was fantastic! We were so admired at the creativity and the talent of the participating artists. I will add more information later when I have more free time.

Finally, on Sunday afternoon, we watched with great enthusiasm the glass sculpture demonstrations by Gérald Collard, a glass-blower. It’s a educational activity that is rather out of the ordinary. From just a small tube of glass, he created various objects amazingly. Even us as adult audience could only say "Wow!". After that, three of us cheerfully enjoyed the drop-in Art workshop with the topic "Seeing through Colour": there we created our own plastic glass in transparent colour. With a piece of paper, we drew whatever our imagination can think of and then put it inside a plastic glass, copying our picture on the outside of the glass by permanent ink markers. At the end, we all were so proud of our work of art and we did bring them home for a display.

Well, so that's enough for a summary of the Spring break week activities in our family. Today Mew starts going back to school and our rhymth of life changes back to normal. Excitedly looking forward to summer break, yeahhh!

A COOL MATH METHOD: LATTICE MULTIPLICATION

I dropped by the CoolMath4kids site while on the way to find best ideas to teach Mew basic math skills and found out the Lattice Multiplication, a super cool math method which I am sure will get a hit for any student scare of doing 2-digit or even more multiplication problem.

Googling the phrase of Lattice Multiplication yielded me further information about this method.
According to Dr.Math, "the Lattice Form of Multiplication (the official name for this method) dates back to the 1200s or before in Europe. It gets its name from the fact that to do the multiplication you fill a grid which resembles a lattice one might find ivy growing on".

While we are all familiar with the regular method of multiplication that always takes 2 steps: multiply and carry altogether, then add, the lattice method does breaks the multiplication process into 3 separate smaller steps, hence a lot of students (including myself) find it really easier! Put it simple, lattice multiplication is a method of multiplying large numbers using a grid. Digits to be carried are written within the grid, making them harder to miss.

LEARN NC, a program of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education, demonstrates step-by-step this useful method as follows:

- First, draw a grid that has as many rows and columns as the multiplicand and the multiplier.
- Next, draw a diagonal through each box from upper right corner to lower left corner. Continue the line a short way past the grid.
- Write one factor across the top and the other down the right side, lining up the digits with the boxes.
- The multiplication is performed by multiplying the digits at the head of each row and column. Fill in each square of the grid with the product of the digits above and to its right, recording the products so that the tens are in the upper (diagonal) half of the square and the ones are in the lower half.


If the product does not have a tens digit, record a zero in that triangle.

- Now add the numbers in the grid along the diagonals, starting from the lower right corner. (“ride the slide.”) Carry any tens into the top of the next diagonal.

- To find the answer, read the digits starting down the left of the grid and continuing across the bottom.


More interestingly and importantly, lattice multiplication can easily be extended to multiply decimal fractions. Suppose, we want to multiply 2.314 by 1.57. We would proceed as before, but draw lines from the decimal points down and to the left until they meet, then follow the diagonal to the left or bottom of the grid. The point where this diagonal emerges from the grid is the position of the decimal point in the answer.