Any suggestions on teaching Maths....

[Tw1nkle]

My DD (5) has always been good at reading, and tbh we've concentrated on Reading, and not a lot at all on Maths.
She can count no problem, but addition and subtraction, even by 1, is totally baffling her.
Does anyone have any tips please?
I've tried counting on fingers and using number lines (which are great, but take the line away and she's stuck again).
Are there any good board games that work on basic maths?
Thanks.

At that age it's fine that she needs a numberline or something concrete to help her - the concept is a tricky one! Are you home edding? Just curious as it's not something I would expect children to come to school knowing!

Hiya - She's in Reception. Apparently she needs to know her numbers 1-20 - that's fine, but she also needs to be able to + and - 1 from each each of those numbers - and that's where she's struggling.
If I ask her what's 3+1, she asks, is that up the line, or down the line.....without the line she really can't do it.

I think in reception it is fine to use a numberline.
Can she visualise the numbers with sweets? You have 3 sweets I give you one more how many do you have? I think that stage tends to come before working with 'abstract' numbers.

However, with my boys we have a game (home made) where we put +1 and -1 onto the sides of a dice (we also have +10 and -10 as they got better). Then use a game board eg draw a worm with numbers 1-10 or as they get better 1-20 etc on it.
Throw dice - before they move, can they work out what the answer is going to be? Are they right?

Get a load of items out (fingers, spoons, pencils, pennies, whatever) and show her what happens If you add one.. if you take away one, how many are left. Get her to test you (make it into a game). Make the numbers real not abstract. Repeat little and often.

Reading house numbers is good, too, to learn to read them at all.

Agree with lljkk. Using actual objects is the way forward here. So count out 3 objects. Add 1. Recount them to find how many you have now. Repeat a lot until she is really secure with it.

Count up and down the number line. Start and finish at numbers other than 1. If you have linking cubes (and tbf you probably won't), 'build' a number line with a tower for each number and line them up. This will help her to see that each number is 1 more than the previous number.

For adding numbers more than 1, count out each group then physically put them together and count the whole lot. When teaching, I'd normally get children to say the number sentence e.g. 5 add 2 makes 7, but that's up to you whether you want to do that. You can then move on to writing it down.

If you want to teach number facts, start with a few at a time and only add more once she knows them.

You can probably adapt most board games that involve dice and some sort of track e.g. snakes and ladders by adding another dice. Adjust the difficulty by using either dotted or numbered dice. If you're feeling particularly creative on a wet afternoon make your own track games. You can have lots of fun and probably a few arguments making up consequences for landing on particular squares.

Tw1nkle, rather than using the words "add one", start with "one more". For instance: "If I have 3 sweets, and my friend gives me one more, how many do I have?"

If she struggles then put up three fingers (or use 3 real sweets) and count them ... 1,2,3 ... then put up another, saying "and one more?" and she will hopefully say 4, since you said she could count.

That way she will learn to relate her counting to addition. It's important that she makes that connection to help her understand what she'd doing.

My DD struggled with this too. I found that relating it to real life helped.

Ie: if teddy has 4 yummy cakes in her lunch box, but baby Annabel eats 1, how many has teddy got left?

Use Jelly tots or smarties - amazing how quickly sweets focus the mind!!!!

Thanks everyone!
I've been using real objects the last few days, as you all suggested.......it's going ok.......slow, but progress is being made!
Thanks again.
I'm trying not to think about when she needs to learn multiplication and division

Buy this: www.powerof2.co.uk/maths-support-book-plus-1/
Do it every day (5 mins. or less).
It will certainly help.

Available on Amazon.

Hi Tw1nkle

The obvious board game coming to mind is snakes and ladders - that will work on addition of 1 to 6.

However any board game where you're moving forward based on a roll of a die (or dice) covers the same concept.

With snakes and ladders if you want to work on subtraction just play it backwards (so start at 100) and wind your way back down to the start.

With DDs we started by counting back, then gradually getting them used to making that jump in their head (especially for -1 or -2). Take away 3 was a little tricky - may have to do it in two steps at first - so take away 1 then take away 2 (or visa versa) and take away 4 can be thought of as two take away twos.

Tricks for 5-6 - can be lots of 1s or 2s - but about here we really worked on take away 3 in one jump.

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With this - really get them to work on all number bonds (not just sums to 10). So knowing all the ways to make 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. This will help with both addition and subtraction of one digit numbers - but especially later when adding/ subtracting larger numbers and needing to carry over or borrow.

You can work on this by playing SNAP for all possible sums.

So if you're working on all sums to 6 - go through a deck of cards - keep back 4 Aces, 4 ones, 4 twos, 4 threes, 4 fours, 4 fives and 4 sixes.

Mix the cards. So in this case your target is six and the game is played by flipping over the card and whoever shouts out what you add to it to make six wins the card. So say you flip over 1 - the first to shout 5 wins the card.

You can play this as subtraction - so again say the number you're subtracting from is 6, if you flip the card 4 - the question is 6 - 4 = ? First to shout out 2 wins.

Gradually you can play this by introducing two digit numbers and having all cards (just counting Jack/ Queen/ King as 10).

HTH

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