You know how you can "hide" vegetables in food? Well I need ideas for "hiding" number bonds in play. Ideas?

[gaelicsheep]

DS (6) is really struggling with remembering his number bonds, and I can see these are the key to him progressing with his numeracy at school. It's like he just switches off and he'll come up with the most ridiculous guesses and then gets really stressed out very quickly. I'm seeing little improvement over the course of a year or more so I'm after some ideas for practising this with him without him realising. Workbooks etc. are totally out, as is anything with obvious "sums" like flashcards, maths board games, etc. Something like "Junior Brain Training Maths Edition" for his Nintendo DS without ever mentioning the word Maths? DS is very astute and very good at picking up when he's being hoodwinked.

Any ideas very gratefully received!

Doing things with chocolate buttons gives them a good incentive if they get to eat at the end!

My DD likes a card game each one with an integer on (two of each at least including 10 and 0), place them face down and pick two if they add up to ten you keep them, winner has the most cards at the end. You can and zeroes to each card and show how it applies to 10s adding to 100 later.

Ah yes that sounds a good idea (card game AND chocolate buttons ). I tried something a bit similar with some playing cards but it wasn't that simple, that one sounds good, thanks.

There's an obvious 'Snap' variant of the game suggested by Rubberneckers, also a hold up an integer, he gets the card if he can say what goes with it to make 10. Also Dominoes but extended to 10 spots, you can add on a domino if the two ends add to 10 (rather than the usual matching).

Orchard Toys may have some 'hidden maths' games. Or you could invest in some 10 sided dice and play ordinary board games like Snakes and Ladders but he can move the number of squares that is the 'other half' of the number bond IYSWIM - throw 6, move 4 (or just use an ordinary dice for the moment - you won't get to practise some of the number bonds BUT he will usually be able to move more than the dice shows so it may be an incentive, especially if you can only move the number that the dice shows....)

Shut the box is a good one, although the maths aren't hidden, it's short and sweet.

Shut the box, whist (or variants to add to 10 as above) and lots of patterning stuff- lego making stacks of 10 in different colours and counting them etc -bead threading is great too .

We practised the number bonds up to 20 just using choccy buttons - it wasn't hidden, but not sure it gains anything by being hidden - my girls know that maths is important and if they played the silly games with mummy they got better at it and could show off to their teacher.... AND they got to eat chocolate

start with 5 in total - "How many buttons do we have?", "I've got 3 ... how many have you got?", "how many does that make again?", "... is that fair" ("NO I want 3") goes in eventually - you need to just spend 2 or 3 minutes EVERY day - we did it straight after tea

(a) protects their teeth more if choccy eaten as part of the meal and b) they are full up from tea so don't want tooooo many buttons!)

after they have got the 5 number bonds (adding AND taking away) - make them think they have done so well they are "grown up" enough to move to 10 buttons, then 20 etc...

If your son is as allergic to any mention of maths as your post suggests this fun number bonds song might not help.

If he's willing to try it then it might help.

Playing shops with real money helped DD - giving out change and so on

Do cooking with him.
Get him to add up the weights of what you are making.

If you've got access to a smart phone or whatever, Squeebles Addition and Subtraction is great. You answer addition and subtraction questions (you can choose which) and get points and stars and power which can be used to play a simple car game. You can set it to be not timed (so no stress) and just for sums up to 10. DD thinks playing it is a treat...

Cooking. Doubling and halving recipes.

Oh and real shopping with real money. Expensive but effective.

neither of my DDs were very good at learning number bonds. Oh they could recite the song perfectly well, "hug a tree 7 and 3" etc... but then you'd say "what is 7+3?" and they would go "errrr" and count on their fingers.

So, if "learning" number bonds are stressing him out then i would just focus on simple addition. 6 +2, 7 + 3, 10 +2 etc... and not worry too much about the number bonds specifically, they are just there (in my opinion) to speed up mental maths, the next step is +1/-1 from number bonds, doubles, near doubles etc...

Cooking - especially fairy cakes or anything that cooks in a 6 x 2 / 8 x 4 / whatever tin. 'Look, there's 3 rows of 4 - if you do two rows & I do one, how many will we each have done? etc

And weighing / measuring - ounces is easier as smaller quantities (6 oz + 2 oz etc etc

Have you got a child's abacus? Slide 4 across for you. How many does ds have? Slide 3 across for you etc. Also slide some across in secret and ds has to work out how many from those left. Makes a lovely diagonal pattern down the abacus as well for reinforcing the fact that when one number goes up the other goes down.

Board games that require 2 dice are really helping ds2 (6.5) at the moment.

A set of Colourfactor blocks to play with (removing the 11 and 12 long ones)? Might help him really grasp what numbers represent and what adding means. Or at least have fun building.

Shut the box - its a dice game
Just about any dice game, but use two dice.

Playing shops, real money is good. Price every thing in pence and have 10p coins to pay with.

Sweetie maths _ choc chips/ sultanas... etc

Thanks everyone, lots of ideas here to work with. Very much appreciated. We got the cuisenaire rods out today and that seemed to go OK too, so I think there is hope for us yet.

I know they are not always ideal but if you have an I phone or I pad there are loads of apps that encourage maths but make it fun. Ds is really into his numbers but he also loves computer games - apps I have on my phone for him include 'squeebles', 'rocket math', 'maths bingo' - he loves all of these!
We also play a lot of snakes and ladders, you can play backwards etc as well. And I have seen black jack recommended before. But by far the best game for his numbers has been top trumps! He loves them - cars top trumps especially.

Numicon?Amazon are selling a small set to use at home for about £13
Colourful and visual.Used in schools.

We now do Snakes and Ladders with two dice and have progressed to three (add two, take the green one away!). It confuses me more than DD - she whizzes through the sum.

anything that lets you 'break up' a bigger number into two smaller components is ideal, as it teaches not just a simple sum by rote (7+3=10), but that 10 is actually made up of two 'pieces', one of 7 and one of 3. It sounds obvious to adults, but many of my pupils don't really get it until they've done it visually a lot of times. It helps them realise the rest of the family of facts, like 10-7=3, or 3+7=10, etc., as well as to use them in mental maths. So construction toys or bead strings or the like with 10 parts can be useful for playing with - not even specifically practising maths, just playing, can reinforce the ways of dividing it.

Another vote for Shut the box. I spotted it this morning in The Works for £4.99 .

Thanks again everyone. MorningPurples - that's exactly it for DS I think, he needs to "see" it in practice. Hence he started by having a greater affinity for numbers than letters, until he could read, because he could count things and letters were more abstract. Right now I think memorising number bonds and the like seems too abstract for him so he doesn't remember them. Similarly he had homework adding 10 to 2 and 3 digit numbers and really wasn't getting what he was doing, until I bought an abacus and demonstrated to him on that. Once he could do something practical and see the result it seemed to click. Also I think we had a bit of a breakthrough with the cuisenaire rods the other day, just doing the simple thing of arranging them by length in steps and then filling in the gaps to make a square.

All these ideas are great and I'm off to look up Shut the Box just now.

Lots of play with Cuisenaire Rods
Have you got "The Dyscalculia Toolkit" by Ronit Bird? It has lots of ideas for activities, many with Cuisenaire rods and many to do with learning number bonds.

Make "sum sandwiches" with Cuisenaire. Use 2 orange rods as the "bread" and work out what combinations of other rods will fit as "filling". Record on cm squared paper with coloured pens/crayons. Think of silly combinations that the filling could be (eg 8 + 2 could be chocolate and ketchup, 6 + 4 is spinach and blackcurrant, 5 + 5 is cheese and custard) and write these with the numbers on your paper.

Play the "make 10" game. Put 2 of each of the rods for 1 through to 9 into a bag ( a small cloth one like a scrabble tile bag is ideal but any opaque one will do), plus an extra 2 yellows to ensure the game has a winner.

Take it in turns to pick out 2 rods by feel, no looking. If they add to 10 you have "made a 10". You have to say "I've made 10 with (say ) 6 and 4 in order for your "10" to count in your score. If they don't add to ten, you still keep them and hope your next pick will give you rods to "complete" the ones you have already. Lots of talk from you about the number as well as colours.("Oh I've got a brown 8 already, so I'm going to try and get a red 2 from the bag this time.) The winner is the one with most pairs that add to 10 at the end.

To make a longer game, put in 4 of each rod, plus one other pair.