Using multiple strategies

Children, like the rest of us, like to put things into categories. They like to think of addition as being addition, subtraction as subtraction and so on. So when they are asked to add 9 to 12, for example, they immediately think of counting up. Counting down does not occur to most children in this circumstance. But as an adult, I know that the easiest way to add nine is to add ten and then take one away. Most children will eventually stumble across this tactic, but before they do, many will give up. They will see that they have been asked to add nine, consider this to be a large number, and think that doing so is hard, and so not try. It is tragic that these children will start the process of falling behind in maths because they are not aware that the addition of nine just involves an addition and a subtraction of one. Puppet Maths aims to show children that maths is EASY, so we teach children the tricks that enable them to succeed, and so build their confidence that they can indeed do maths.