Bag Stories – Add & Sub
Math Concepts
Add/Subtract numbers 1 to 8
Materials
None
Players
2
Play
You and your student each pretend to have a bag with some number of things. One person creates a story such as: “Your bag has 3 raisins and mine has one more. How many do I have?”
After your student gets comfortable with these scenarios, let them come up with the question some of the time. This is great fun for them, especially if you make the occasional “mistake” that they can fix.
Discussion and Tips
When an answer is provided, be sure to test it out. In the above example, if the student says you have 4 raisins in your bag, you can ask “Is 4 one more than 3?”
Discussion and Tips
These bag stories can get more elaborate with experience. For example, the story could be “I have two fewer cookies than you do, and together we have six cookies. How many cookies do you have?” Another example, “You have twice as many candies as I do, and together we have nine pieces. How many pieces do you have?”
There is of course no reason you need to stay with using two bags. There are any number of story changes you can explore. You can have three people involved, each with a bag. You can talk about different types of fish in a fish tank. You can talk about scoops of different flavors of ice cream. Find a topic that captures your student’s imagination and stick with it for a while.