Tutoring

NUMBER GAMES

Find things that come in pairs around the home (e.g., shoes, light sockets). Ask you child to count up the number of pairs of shoes (they should be counting by 1’s here). Then, ask your child to count up the number of actual shoes (here, they should be counting by 2’s). Ask them to explain, in their own words, why these answers are different.

Work with your child on counting BACKWARDS from 100 –1. Some children may need a number line to help them do this. Making a number line is easy – get a long strip of paper, make a line on it, and put marks on the line. At each mark, write a number (start at the number 1 and work to the right until you reach 100). Even though your child may be able to do this, encourage her to practice. This is a very important skill. The trick here is to make it fun so that she does not get bored. Try these tricks: how fast can she do it? Time her with a timer. Do it yourself and ask her to time you. Ask her to play teacher: YOU count and ask her to listen to you. Make a mistake and see if she can detect it. Make a game out of this: if she detects the mistake, she gets a point. If she doesn’t, then you get a point. The person with the most points wins. Increase the difficulty of this game by counting faster. After a while, when you and her have become experts at this game, ask her to be the counter and make the mistakes. See if you can detect them!

Newspaper Game For this activity, you will need a newspaper (grocery flyers work well for this). With your child, find the number “1.” Then find the number “2” and so on. How high can you go? See if you can find a number “11” (and not by taking two “1”’s and gluing them together!) Glue the numbers on a sheet of paper and work with your child on decorating them.

At the grocery store, ask you child to hand you various numbers of objects (e.g., Please give me 7 apples; Please hand me 2 cans of juice). At home, use numbers when you speak with your child – (e.g., “Drishtant, please put 4 knives and 4 forks on the table.”)

Compare numbers from 1- 100 (i.e., tell which one is larger and smaller). You will need a deck of playing cards. If you are unable to use playing cards, you can take 50 pieces of paper and write the numerals from 1-50 on them – one for each card. Some children, depending on their abilities, might be able to do this themselves. Ask your child to divide the deck into two equal parts. (This can be done by “One for me, one for you, one for me, one for you…until all of the cards have been handed out). By the way, this would be a great time to use the word “half” and to show how you can divide the pile into two halves.

After you have divided the cards up, you and your child both put them face down in front of you. Each of you takes the top, hidden card from the pile and lays it out. The person with the higher card gets both cards. Next, you and your child take the next hidden card from the top of the pile and compare them. The person with the higher card takes both.

If there is a tie (e.g., you both lay out numbers that are the same), you each lay down another card. The higher one wins all four cards. This keeps going on until one person has no more cards. If you want to end the activity earlier (this game can take a long time sometimes), set a timer at the beginning of the game. (as an aside, children will start to be able to see how time passes when they can observe a timer counting minutes). When the timer goes off, the person with the most cards is the winner. Ask your child to count up her cards while you count up yours. Compare the final answer and see who the winner is.

Variation: the person who has the lower number (and not the higher number) gets the cards. This way, your child has to determine which number is lower.

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