Numbers (add and minus)

Before:

Well I've got two more kindergarten lessons to plan before Songkran. The first of these is for this Monday: Numbers (add and minus).

You may remember that when the topic was "Playing a Game," I bought a clock and used this to play "What's the time, Mr Wolf?" Well Eve suggested that I use this to help with the numbers lesson. I could initiate the game to practise the numbers 1-12.

I had thought that learning some bigger numbers would be useful: 1-12 (via the clock), 100, 1000, 10,000, and 1,000,000. But bigger numbers can't be counted out in a fun way by steps.

Instead I think I will use flash cards, including the numbers 1-12, a + symbol, and a - symbol to vary the number of steps the children take. I think I will bring extra cards for larger groups of children so there are enough to count the entire group. Then the number could decide the number of children making a circle, or making a train.

That will do for now. Next week's topic is Telling a story, so more on that later.

After: The lesson was a success with most of the groups. I made up a set of large dominoes on paper which I stuck to cardboard based on the those I found at this website: http://www.first-school.ws/theme/printables/dominoes-math.htm I also made three extra dominoe sized pieces of paper with a "+," a "-," and an "=." I photocopied worksheets copied from this site and then took them in on Monday.

I found that the children were managing only a plus and a minus sum in the time available so the next day I cut the sheets in half. I also decided to give all the children the same domino to copy. Finally today I realized that it would help if I filled out a sheet myself to give as an example for the children to copy from.

Other things I learnt were that holding three dominoes at once is difficult so as soon as I could I taught the children to make the "+," "-," and "=" signs with their fingers. Children were also very good at counting in order up to 10 but most had not gone beyond this number. I encouraged them to say the number of fingers I held up. I made this more fun by allowing the first child to get the correct answer (or repeat the correct answer) to come up and stand by me and be a zombie (Thursday K3 lesson kids love zombies since I introduced them to them at Halloween).