Number combinations and Twins

In my house I have two school age children, who are two different types of learners. My daughter is artistic oriented. She loves drawing, coloring, and writing. And she's very good at those things. My son is math oriented. He loves building, solving, and counting, which he also is very good at.

We played a little exercise today during math time, which enaged both of their interests, and can easily be adapted for each child's level of understanding. We took index cards, and on the blank side I drew a black line, and made a group of dots of differing amounts on each half. My 1st grader had more dots to count, my Kindergartener had less dots to count.

(ignore the crooked lines and the less-than-perfect dots, this was made during our discussion, and I knew they would be throw aways, this isn't something you would want to laminate and keep around necessarily. But my compulsive self wanted to make a perfect looking one just for pictures, I've resisted!)

In math this week we've been talking about "twins." (4+3=7 and 3+4=7 ) So on the back of each index card they needed to write the number combinations and figure out the sum, then write the twin as well.

Then I gave them a few blank ones, to write their own combination of numbers, and the math sentences on the back. My daughter, the artistic and creative one, was a bit more ambitious than her skills are capable of, and drew about 86 dots on one side, and 74 dots on the other side, then she became stumped when she couldn't figure out the sum and kept loosing count! We finally agreed that Mom knew what she was talking about, and she ended up settling for a number in the 20's.

My kindergartener dislikes writing with a captial D! But if you give the kid a math game, he will show that he DOES know how to write the numbers, even if his handwriting needs a lot of improvement. Not bad for the second week of school, and the kid who refused to write them independently before today, huh?

(Let's pretend that I know why this picture keeps posting rotated, and I'm just leaving it like this for flare, because I can't figure out why some flip and some don't! Sorry. )

You can also use domino's to write the number combinations, challenge them to figure out the sum. We also used colored popsicle sticks that I got at the dollar store to show two different combinations in each hand, we orally figured out the sum, and then crossed their hands to reverse the number combination, helping them get the idea of "twin" addition facts.

To learn how to write numbers, my son has been practicing his letters on these worksheets, which I made for preschool activities pritint off my own templates from kidzone. I made a binder of beginner words, their names, capital letters, lowercase letters, and numbers, then put them in page protectors. They trace the letters or numbers with dry erase markers so they can be used again and again, and from kid to kid!

After he successfully wrote numbers with a pencil, and wasn't tracing or transition writing them, he felt much more confident in himself, and told me that he prefers a notebook now, he doesn't want to use the preschool workbooks anymore. WIN!