Math Learning Steps

Fingers and quantities

Using your child’s fingers is an effective way to do addition and subtraction to 10, and it will build your child’s confidence and understanding of these operations in terms of quantities. The focus of this step is using fingers in a simple way to do adding and subtracting problems whose largest number is ten or less.

Ten frames

A ten frame is a 2 by 5 grid of open squares. These are usually filled left to right, with the top row filled first. They are useful for getting familiar with quantities up to 10 as well as seeing pairs of numbers that add up to 10 – the filled squares plus the unfilled ones will always add up to 10.

Flash numbers

A fun activity with your child is to flash a partially filled ten frame or a group of fingers on your two hands, and then have your child quickly recognize the quantity of things. If you use five or more fingers, put up five of those fingers on one hand so the two hands look like a ten frame. This activity also lays the groundwork for more easily using quantities on two hands for adding and subtracting.

Finger adding to 10

If both numbers are five or less, put up the appropriate number of fingers on the two hands and count them up. Alternatively, put up the number of fingers for one of the numbers, and then count that many more fingers for the other number. When you are done, the total number of fingers shown will be the sum.

Finger subtracting to 10

Do subtracting from numbers that are ten or less by putting up the number of fingers for the number being subtracted from. Then put down one finger at a time as you count up the number that is being subtracted. The resulting number of fingers left up is the answer.