Thursday, September 6, 2007

Does the child need to add completing the ten?

Question:
...have an other question about using your worksheets for my daughter. She is six years old - home schooled.
Currently, we are using Addition & Subtraction 2

She is able to add and subtract any numbers from 1 to 100 but when I try to explain "complete the ten" concept, she doesn't like thinking about it. She would rather solve 9+6 by counting on the finger 6 after 9 ... . She complains that I have to first subtract then add to make 10.

My question is: Should I let her complete the exercises without making her think in this manner?


It is important that she understands the IDEA in completing the ten. I gather that she does indeed understand the idea, but doesn't want to do it, since you'd have to both subtract and add, right? She just likes to do one operation, not two?

The adding though, is really easy, because you add 10 + 5 or 10 + 7 or something to ten. If she's counting with fingers, she's not yet seeing the easiness of this adding. It is also faster to do 9 + 6 by first subtracting one from 6 (getting 5), and then adding 10 + 5, because you can do 10 + 5 really easy: it is one ten and five, or we call that fifteen.

Of course she must understand place value to realize how easy that addition is.

Now, the goal is ALSO to eventually memorize the answers. You might let her know that she can't always count with fingers to find 9 + 6 but a quicker method is needed.

You can let her do some exercises "her way" for now as long as she also is able to understand and do the "complete the ten".

But come back to this idea how completing the ten makes the whole calculation easier and quicker. She WILL need to understand the idea when studying CARRYING in addition, (I mean to totally understand how it works. I realize kids can learn carrying mechanically as well.)

So you can say 1-3 months later reprint some pages and try again.

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