Addition Number Stories!

Happy Thursday!

Anyone else glad Friday is right around the corner??

I am!

This full moon week has reeked havoc on our kiddos!!

This week my kiddos have been working on addition number stories!

It's amazing how using food and animals as the main objects in my stories can really keep the kid's attention!

I found these cute ladybug mats here.

They were free and perfect size for my kids!

We used them a ton and it was a great visual to be able to count the ladybug's dots. I gave them the number of dots for each side, they put them on each wing, then slid them together to find the total number of dots! It worked like a gem!! Everything in this first step was done orally only! It sounded something like this, "I had a ladybug who had 6 dots on her left wing and 4 dots on her right wing. How many dots did she have all together?"

I then moved to having the kids see the number equations. I did this after I was sure the kids understood the number stories that were done orally. I wanted to ensure that they were not overloaded with the auditory and visual parts at the same time.

A few days later we started just writing the equations on dry erase boards. A number of kids were having trouble with just the equation. I was trying to see if they would resort to using their fingers or mental math to count. A few kids did pop their fingers up and use them while others did try to use mental math. The kids who used mental math were off a number or two when they gave their answers. So, after I gave them an equation I gave them the suggestion to put dots under each number so they would still have a visual to count. This worked so well for them all!