Middle Kid, doesn’t get carrying in addition AT ALL. We’ve been over it and over it and it’s just not going in. She’s already up to adding three digit numbers in Abeka, so I decided to try it with some manipulatives. So, I got a box of base 10 blocks and printed out some Montessori Large Numerals.
In the above and below pictures, you can see that the cards are made so that the child can build the number with its component parts and then stack them to read it as they would see on a page. I HEART this idea.
So, we built the numbers, and now we combine the piles.
Then we made the “exchanges” so that there weren’t over ten in any column.
She “read” the new number on the mat and wrote it down.
Now, I will tell you, that this didn’t solve our problems, but it did help. “Why can’t I have 14 ten bars? I don’t want to exchange. How many is the limit?” I think this will be one of those concepts that we’re going to make head way little bit, by little bit.
One caveat, if I had a million dollars, I’d have bought these instead.
It’s harder to tell on the plastic blocks that a ten bar is ten ones. It just looks like it’s own thing. It’s easy to go, “I have one block, one stick, and three cubes(113). That’s more objects than just three blocks (300).” Montessori bead material has WEIGHT. You can tell that the thousand block is a thousand beads because you can FEEL it.