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Recommended Age: 5 years and onwards (can be younger depending on the child’s skills and experiences)

Purpose: To present the entire structure of addition and to help the child memorise the addition combinations

Level of Parent Involvement: Medium, the adult must present this exercise to the child, once the child has been shown they may work independently

Prerequisites

• The child must be able to count accurately from 1-10 and onwards
• The child must be able to write numbers
• The child must be able to match the numeral symbol with its quantity of numbers 1-10 and beyond
• The child must have had many experiences doing addition with the golden beads
• The child has been presented to the addition strip board, presentations 1, 2, 3 and 4
• The child has been presented to addition chart 3, 4 and 5 has had many experiences repeating these exercises
• The child must have memorized all essential addition combinations through repetition of work with the addition strip board exercises and work with the addition charts 3, 4 and 5, prior to completing chart 6

Materials

* Addition chart 6

* Prepared equations

* Booklets of squared paper

* Pencil

* tiles with an answer printed in red for all the essential combinations

* Control chart 2

* Blue tac

Note: if doing this exercise with your child from home you will be using the paper version (refer resource pack) (the tiles are in the chart PDF)

Steps

• Invite the child, together bringing the materials to the table
• Introduce chart 6 (blind/blank chart)
• Ask the child “where are the numbers?” noticing the chart is blank
• Then tell the child “the reason why the chart is blank is because you have the answers in your head!”
• The answers are also on the tiles, invite the child to set these up as per the below image
• Show the child how to lay out the tiles, child may help setting out (refer to image below)
• Once the tiles have been laid out, invite the child to choose an equation
• The child picks a slip and says the answer
• They then get the tile and do the finger moves, leaving 1 finger on the square
• They use the other hand to pick up the tile and place it on the square
• Leave the child to work independently
• The child may do as few or as many as they wish (most children will want to fill the board) blue tack may be helpful to secure tiles and protect from bumps
• At the end child may check with chart 2

Variations

• Chart with 3 children, 1 reads out the slip, 1 does the finger movements, 1 says the answer and places the tile, rotate after several turns (e.g. 5)

Note: if a child doesn’t know the answer for chart 6 they may use any of the previous charts to find the answer (encourage the child to say the equation out loud on the way to the shelf then to repeat the equation and answer on the way back)