Welcome to the operations section.

Here you will find games and activities that will help your child with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division as well as problem solving.

 

Addition

Simple one number additions are usually introduced first. Addition is easy to grasp and is very similar to counting in a way.

At first, children will be using concrete material, like beans, fingers or number charts, to help them understand the concept.

Then, at some point, when children are at ease with adding using concrete material, they will be able to start being able to ‘count’ the solution in their head without any other aid.

Even if not necessary, it can also be helpful to automate some of the answers to some specific additions too. For example it can be very helpful for later if a child just knows that 5 + 5 = 10 and doesn’t have to do the actual counting to come up with the answer.

In fact all doubles addition, if known by heart, will give your child a great benchmark for later, when he needs to tackle more difficult additions.

 

 

Here is a fun dice game that you can play with your child to help him remember his doubles addition.

 

Children will then be introduced to additions of double digits numbers, which will soon expand into many more digits using the same principle.

 

 

Subtraction

Subtraction is a little more tricky to grasp for some children as it involves taking away or counting backwards.

It is usually introduced once children are able to do some simple one digit additions.

The process of learning subtractions is very similar to the one for addition where they will first learn the process with concrete material, move on to being able to subtract in their mind and then start doing more complex subtractions with two or more digits.

 

Multiplication

Before introducing multiplication, I always like to prepare children to the concept with some introductory games that can help them understand what it is all about. This help them build a framework that can help them understand what they are actually doing when multiplying.

Once they understand the concept, what is important to me is that they can figure out the answer to any multiplication.

I do play games that will help drill the multiplication tables but I don’t put much emphasis on them having to know all their multiplication tables by heart.

Just like for addition and subtraction, they will then start doing multiplication calculations with two digits and expand that process to include more digits as they improve.

A nice game to help children practice their advanced multiplication skills is the Bean Pot Multiplication. It doesn’t require much preparation and you can easily have a quick game with your child. As an adult playing with a child though, as he is likely to make more mistakes than you, I would not give out a bean to each player for having a right answer. Instead, I would keep as only rule that each player can only win his bean for highest result if his calculations are right. I wouldn’t extend that game for too long either and would call out the winner to be the first person to win three beans.