Working on his Addition

The holiday started and now Little-N has a Montessori Teacher all for himself. I'm planning to cover a lot during the holiday to compensate for the past few months were he didn't learn much as he was adjusting to a new school. First on the list is working on addition. He's quite good with adding on his fingers and has memorised some basic sums, but I prefer that he masters the materials before moving him on to further sums.


We started with the Positive Snake game, here are some pics of how to do it.

POSITIVE SNAKE GAME

For the basic presentation you will need

• two sets of the short bead stair,
  
• 9 golden bead bars
  
• a counter [bit of card with a slit cut out for the child to use when counting]
  

1. Show the child how to build the bead stairs, one starting from 1 and the other starting from 9. Then ask the child to lay out the Golden beads vertically beside the short bead stairs.


2. Show the child how s/he can make a snake by taking on bead from the top of the first bead stair and one from the top of the other bead stair [i.e. 1 and 9 then 2 and 8]. Continue in this manner.


3. Once the child has built a snake with all the beads, show the child how they can count the beads in the snake starting from the left [The child can use the counter if they wish, Little-N prefers to count with his fingers]. When s/he reaches 10, show the child how they can replace the coloured beads with a golden bead bar. Place the coloured beads at the top of the mat/table vertically one on top of each other.


4. Continue in the same manner, counting to ten, substituting for a golden bead bar and placing the coloured beads at the top. Continue until all the snake has been changed to gold.



5. Once the snake has all been changed, show the child how they can take the golden beads and place them next to the coloured beads.



6. Next you can show the child how 1 and 9 made 10, 2 and 8 made 10 and so on.

In the last picture Little-N wanted to double check that the beads made 10 so he counted them again.