Give them Something to Look At

Not everyone learns new information the same way. As educators of young children, it is our job to make sure content is fun and accessible, or students will quickly tune out and miss the information.
 

Just like dice, dot cards are an effective tool to help children recognized quantity and perform basic arithmetic.   With them, children learn to group dots in patterns they easily recognize, and then add the groups together to determine the quantity of dots on the card.  Every kid will see different groupings and different patterns in the dots, but they can all experience success no matter how they arrive at the answer. 

Along the same line, ten frames are another helpful way to visualize quantities.  Ten frames have two rows of five empty boxes, forming a group of ten.  In Rhombus Club, we compare each of the five boxes to one finger on your hand.  If you have all five fingers up on one hand (or a marker in all of the top five boxes) and two fingers up on the second hand (two markers in the second row of boxes), then you are showing seven fingers (boxes).  Unlike fingers, using ten frames you can easily express numbers that are larger than ten.  You just add another ten frame.

There are an endless number of games you can play using dice, dot cards, and/or ten frames.  Do you have one you'd like to share?