Ever wonder how to teach your child their math facts? Trust me, you do not need flashcards! There are some wonderful games out there that easily get your child familiar with their numbers. Number manipulation is the prime thing that most of my second graders were lacking. Number manipulation simply means: how numbers work together. Learning your facts are an important piece of number manipulation. The problem with flash cards is they teach memorization, but no number sense. Numbers need to make sense. When a child sees the number 6 they need to know some important things about it: it represents six things, it's called the six, it's bigger than ___ and smaller than___.
Once a child begins to understand their numbers they are ready to begin learning their facts (manipulation of the numbers). I've posted many games on here that are helpful for number manipulation and facts: one more, plus one, minus one, etc. Here are some games we played today that are helping James learn to manipulate the number 5 and ultimately teach him his facts to 5.
Shake Those Beans: we use two sided counters for this game-five of them. You shake them up, dump them out and record your result.We always record the color red first, then the color yellow.