The number words can be difficult for young children, especially the "teen numbers."  A Teen number is defined as "ten and some more."  So what is eleven and twelve?  In some countries the words actually match the quantity.  China has students saying er for two, shi for ten and shi er for twelve and er shi er for twenty-two.  Compare that with our language and no wonder the United States is a year behind in math at a very early age.  Have your children or students count daily.  

The words of math are important and children need to have what is called "a stable order."  That means that the child can say the numbers in the correct sequence and does it each time. Listen for numbers that are left out and stop and help your child/student so that the error pattern does not continue.

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As school begins, remember to have children talk about math on a daily basis.
Each week, we will write activities that can be done with young children.
Have children count out loud as you are driving in the car or walking home from school or being in the classroom. Have them count starting with different numbers. Listen to hear if the words are in the correct order.
To begin the year:
Prekindergarten- Count up to 10

Kindergarten - Count up to 20. Listen for those tricky numbers from 11-20.

 Debra and I have added three new place and value boards to our collection.  

The first mat builds the understanding of  hundreds, tens and ones. This two-sided dry erase mat can be used with our small ten frame pieces found on the CD in the Number Concept Activity Book or base-ten blocks.  This helps the child make the connection with the words, symbol and quantity of numbers in the hundreds.

The second mat builds the understanding of hundredths, tenths and whole numbers.  This mat can stand alone or be combined with the first mat to show how our base-ten system is built.  The two-sided mat has decimals on one side and fractional representation on the other.

The third mat builds the understanding of thousandths, hundredths, tenths and whole numbers.  Again this mat can stand alone or be combined with the first mat to build the understanding of our base-ten system.  The two-sided mat has decimal on one side and fractional representation on the other.

The new Common Core practices require students and teachers to use appropriate materials for students to learn different concepts.  We believe these mats would make a great addition to the classroom.  They help students connect words, symbols and quantity.

 Debra and I are off tomorrow to attend the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) Conference.  We will be both presenting and exhibiting.  We are excited to share our knowledge with other teachers who have a passion to help children in their learning of mathematics.  We will have an e-workshop on Thursday where we will present all of our products to those who attend.  Friday, will be a gallery workshop where teachers will be working with our materials and will have the opportunity to take samples with them.  On Saturday, our focus will be on Place and Value with what we consider to be eight essential steps to helping teach place and value to young students.

If you are in Philadelphia, please stop by our booth (1040) and say hi.  We would love to chat about our assessment and materials we have produced to help the young student and those that struggle with math.

 Debra and I had a great three days at the Columbus Convention Center sharing our products with preschool teachers.  We now have mats to use with the Bears and Chairs.  We have created five different mats.  The first is a game to help young children with counting, one-to-one correspondence and cardinality.  We have a two-sided mat with five beds on one side and ten beds on the other.  Children take the bears and use them to place in the beds.  We are helping the young child see the relationship to five and ten.  Our second mat is a play mat that can be used to retell the story of "The Three Bears."  The next three mats were created so young children from pre-kindergarten through grade two can work on problem solving by acting out the story.  We have a cave, table and zoo mat.  These mats are two-sided and can be used to help students with all of the different types of addition and subtraction problems that are listed in the new Common Core Standards.

Check our product page to see what they look like.

We are off to Philadelphia next week to share our products with teachers who will be at the NCTM conference.