Numeracy

[Guest]

Hi, hope someone can help me. I seem to be having a mental block at the moment with teaching addition and subtraction to my Reception class. I really want some great play based activities rather than use the dreaded worksheets. If you can help me out I would really appreciate it.

[Rea]

One of my favourite resources are my dice. I've got 2 large ones with the plastic pockets on each side (possibilities are endless) and a small spot one for table top games which I convert to colour or numerals depending on what I'm doing. I also like to have things to handle to make the numbers real, like 5 little ducks, etc. Sorry I cant actually think of any specific activities at the moment though, the bacons cooking

[Guest]

Hi Maz

I often use stories and rhymes to teach addition and subtraction eg Ten in the bed. We put ten cuddly toys in bed, read the story and take out one toy at a time, you can focus on how many have gone, how many are left. You can also encourage all the vocab - take away, subtract etc. Often I'll make up my own stories to use with our counting objects - bears, elephants , fish, transport. The children enjoy the stories, you can make them as simple or complicated as you like, so good for differentiation. I've made some A4 laminated backgrounds to use with the objects, so if I'm working with a small group everyone gets to do the adding/subtracting with their own objects. I have a roadway background for the transport, a fish bowl one for the fish and a spiders web for the elephants (to go with the rhyme). Hope this helps

Debbie

[Guest]

One of the best resources for this I have made is an outline of a double decker bus, a set of get on get off cards and a die. The children roll the die to see how many playmobil figures start on their trip. and then take a get on or off card and roll the die. The children add or take off figures as dictated by card and diewe then just keep comparing how many are on each others buses for the time. I tell them when the buses are coming to the end of their journey.

 

A second game is 'Spotty dragons' -an outline of a dragon and a die and counters are needed. you can place 20 counters on the dragon and then roll a die-which can be 1-3 or 1-6 e.t.c. and then you roll the die in turns to see who gets better from their chickenpox first-you can reverse the idea too.

 

Lynda

you can start with 20 counters

[Guest]

How about going outside - bean bags into a bucket - how many in on first go, how many now, say the number sentence. Or skittles for subtraction. Or do the bus with chairs and the children.

 

Harricroft

[Guest]

Welcome Maz

[Guest]

You might find this web site useful here

 

One of the games we play is magnetic fishing - the children fish out two (numbered) fish and add their scores up to see who has the biggest number.

 

I have also made a number problem lotto game - turn over the card, read the number story (addition or subtraction), work out the answer and see if you can find it on your board.

[Sue R]

Thanks, that looks like an interesting site!

 

And welcome, from me, too, maz!

 

Sue

[Susan]

Hi Maz and welcome!

 

Lots of lovely idea there, I always use ladybirds and spots with dice and/ or numeral cards.

[Marion]

Dominoes adding both sides to find a total

Skittles .....start with 10 bowl how many did you knock down? how many are left?

A good one I saw last week when visiting another school was a bucket of sand containing different value cubes (so the children couldnt see what they were selecting) the children took turns to pick out 2 cubes and add the values together to find the total

[Guest]

Thank you so much for all your ideas. Don't know why I was finding it so hard as it's obvious when reading your suggestions. That website is great. Feel much better now and am looking forward to teaching these activities with my children. Thanks everyone