Teaching Kids to Count Dots when Adding

Video Transcript

Once your child has mastered the numbers 1 through 100, and knows how to write them and knows how to count up to them and doesn't fidget along the way 72, 75, skipping numbers or forgetting anything. Once they have that down and they have that clear, you can start to introduce addition. Now you might think addition this early, but addition actually comes very naturally to children. If you think about it, they're always adding things; they want more toys, they want more of this, so it comes very naturally. Even subtraction comes naturally because people are always taking things away from them that they might not want taken away. So addition in the beginning, the very easy thing to make is a dots addition worksheet. Just like we used dots to teach number values. You can make a dots addition worksheet just like this, very simply. All they need to do is write their name which if they're following the reading series, they should be ready to write their name by now. Then give them some simple problems. Explain that this is a plus sign and it means that we're bringing two numbers together to make a bigger number. Explain this is the equal sign and this means what you get. That's what I tell them when they're younger. Equals means is what you get when you put these two together. So, 2+1, now they can use their fingers for this in the beginning but I don't want to teach them to use their fingers forever and that's why down the road you'll see that we're going to memorize addition facts. But for now they can use their fingers, they can use counters, they can use beans. But a neat way if you don't have any counters and they have their pencils always is to draw dots again. So above the 2, they'll make 2 dots. Above the 1, they'll make 1 dot and then tell them when they're done with this, count up all the dots. 1, 2, 3. This is how many all together equals 3. And then of course, you do the same for all of them. Remember to teach them to make clear dots, even circles if they have to because you don't want them to just make dashes and count the wrong way. Also teach them to count precisely so that they count one circle or dot more than once and that's basically a very simple worksheet that you can make over and over again.

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