Age:
4-5 years

Aims:
• To work with the concept of number sense.
• To identify and give examples of different ways of decomposing the number 6.
• To work with additions and simple substractions.
• To use different models for problem solving: manipulation, graphical representations, symbolic representations.

Materials: Two leaves and 6 ladybirds drawn on cardboard, sheets of white paper, markers and coloured pencils.
Introduction: The class begins with a story about ladybirds.The ladybirds are distributed at random over the two leaves. The children draw pictures of the distribution and represent the results with symbols.
Main part: The teacher asks the children to explore other possible distributions of the ladybirds and to represent them on the sheets of paper.
Roundup: The children's work is put on the walls of the class.

Observations:
This activity is done over 2 mornings and the children have had to have worked on decomposing smaller numbers in previous classes.

Reply to this activity from Escola Sadako, Barcelona

Comment on this activity from Sweden