How Everyday Pop-sticks Can Help A 6-8 Year Old Learn Maths
Young children need hands-on materials to understand number situations
. Too often we present them with abstract situations before they are ready. You don't need anything special to make an enormous difference in your child's Maths understanding. You can use any materials you have a plentiful supply of at home. Pop-sticks are inexpensive and easily available if nothing else springs to mind. This article is specifically about developing counting, which is just one of many areas of Maths where the use of pop-sticks or other hands-on materials is recommended.
Counting forwards
Ask your child to choose a number of pop-sticks between 20 and 30 to put out on the table or floor. When he has done this, ask him to prove to you that he is correct. As he counts them to prove this to you, watch to see if he counts accurately.
Then take turns with your child to add one more and say how many there are now.
Add about 12 numbers and stop. If he is finding this very easy, get him to choose a much higher starting point and follow the same procedure. If he finds it difficult you choose a lower starting number and follow the same procedure.
Counting backwards
Start at 20. Take turns to remove one pop-stick and say how many there are. If he can do this easily, move your starting number a little higher.
Skip-counting
When he can use the 0-9 pattern correctly at least up to 50, explore skip-counting by 2s, starting from 0.
Put out two pop-sticks and say 2. Then ask your child to add two more and say how many. Continue taking turns up to 50. It's also a good idea to take turns colouring the numbers as you go on a simple hand-drawn 0-50 chart.
Then work on going backwards from 20, removing two pop-sticks each time. If he can do this, start from 30 and go back to 0.
When he can skip-count like this try doing exactly the same thing but start from 1. Put out one pop-stick. Then ask your child to add two more and say how many. Take turns but stop when it starts gets difficult for your child. Work on increasing just by a couple of numbers, practising over time using the pop-sticks.
Doubling
Put out 2 pop-sticks. Ask him to double it by adding more pop-sticks and tell you how many there are. Practise doubling any amount up to 10 in the same way. Besides teaching him that doubling is a maths strategy, you are helping him develop the understanding that number facts stay the same, ie 4 and 4 is always 8.
Making tens
As we use a base 10 number system, working to help him see 'tens' is very important. If your child can count to 100 he will be able to bundle pop-sticks.
Give him a heap of up to 60 pop-sticks and ask him to bundle them into groups of 10. Ask if he's sure they're in groups of ten and how he knows this. Then check for accuracy. Point out that accuracy is crucial in Maths.
Then ask him to bundle them together using elastic bands.
Take turns to count in 10s, adding a bundle each time.
Take turns to select any number between 20 and 50 and make each number using the bundles and loose pop-sticks, eg 45 will be 4 bundles of 10 and 5 loose pop-sticks.
Keep these bundles intact to practise with later.
by: Ali Roundtree
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