Curriculum Guides

Grade Level: Kindergarten

Content Areas: Operations

Skills: Understand concepts and language for addition and subtraction, word problems

Prerequisites: Counting, One-to-One Correspondence, Numeration

Instructional Practices: Communication, Reasoning, Problem Solving

Materials Needed: An ocean storyboard, a small portion cup with 15 fish crackers

Technology: Counters and Sums, Math Concepts

Activity:

Tell number stories and have the children act out the story using their counters (fish crackers) For example: " This is a story about a whale. He is a very special whale and he loves to eat little fish. In this story YOU are going to be the whale. Who is the whale?" The children answer, "We are." "One bright day the whale was swimming around. All at once he saw two fish swimming near him in the ocean. Show me what happened." Each child takes two fish out of the cup and places them on the ocean storyboard. "Boy, am I hungry, said the whale and he ate one of the fish." Each child eats one of the fish. "And how many fish are left?" Children answer one. "Pretty soon 2 more fish came swimming along. How many fish are in the ocean now? Show me with your counters." Continue the story having children add and subtract fish until all crackers are gone. This game should be played over and over again to reinforce number concepts at different levels. Let the children improvise on the theme and take turns telling the story to the group.

Use a variety of addition and subtraction situations. For example, "there are 5 fish in the ocean and some more fish swim into the ocean. Now there are 7 fish in the ocean. How many fish swam in? After playing this game several times at the concept level, this is an excellent activity to introduce the symbols of addition, subtraction and equals.

Theme Ideas: Use a variety of storyboards and counters to fit many themes.