Numeracy Stage 4

Activities to do at home with Advanced Counting children (Stage 4)

These children are now heading towards the transition to Part-Whole thinking. They may have trouble believing there are strategies beyond ‘counting on’, as counting on is a milestone in itself and the children are often very proud they have reached this stage! We now need to let them know that they’re very clever at counting on, but now they need to use the knowledge they have of numbers to try to use other clever ways to add numbers.
This is a very difficult and lengthy transition to make so remain patient and support the child’s efforts. It may take a while.
Part -Whole thinking is the ability to split numbers into parts and rejoin them to solve sums, without having to count on or back in ones, etc.
E.g. working out 9 + 4 by just knowing that 9 + 1 = 10, so we can take one from the four and add it to the 9, making ten, then we’ll have 3 left.
Or, 8 + 7 = 15 because if I know that 8 + 8 = 16 off by heart, I can take one off to get the answer, because 7 is one less than 8.
So in order to use these strategies the child needs to have certain knowledge e.g. Know their doubles to 20 off by heart (6+ 6, 7 + 7, 4 + 4, etc) Know combinations to 10 off by heart (7+3, 2+8, 9+1,etc)
Know10+some more off by heart (10+2=12, 10+6=16, etc)

•   When playing board games see if the child can work out which number they’re going to land on without having to move space by space. E.g. I’m on 26 and I’ve thrown a 5. Where will I land?
  Games such as Ludo and backgammon can involve split moves. E.g. instead of moving one counter 6, they could move another counter 4 and another 2.
  
•   Continue playing grouping to 10 games with ice block sticks or haricot beans, etc (mentioned in ‘Counting From One By Imaging’ section.) Try using 3 dice to make adding the totals a little more challenging.
  
•   Board games could be played using two multi-sided dice so that the children are adding bigger numbers together.
  
•   Practise basic facts–doubles(4+4,9+9,etc),facts to 20 (eg 16+4, 2+12, 9+ 11)
  
•   Practise counting forwards to 100 and back to 0 again (or lower!), counting in 2s 5s 10s.
  
•   Use the odometer reading of the car to practise reading large numbers. See how many kilometres were travelled on a long trip. 
  

                 

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