How To Help Your Child Learn Some Elementary School Addition Tips Or Tricks

What are some "addition" tips or tricks?

When I teach addition, the first thing I do, I teach “plus ones” – and it's just counting, it's just going up one. The next thing I do is I teach “plus twos” and before I teach “plus twos”, I talk about even numbers and odd numbers and I show them on a number line how even numbers are two apart and odd numbers are two apart. So, any time you add two, you just go to the next even number or the next odd number. So, “plus ones” and “plus twos” are pretty easy. Then I do “plus tens” and I try to break out – see, nineteen is nine and ten just like twenty-nine is twenty and nine and I try to break them out – so, we do “plus tens” and they usually get “plus tens” pretty easily. And, so from there, I try to find some compromises so I'll do “plus nines” – so, I'll say, Okay I want you to think about that number plus ten so three plus ten is thirteen, you know that like that – so, you just need to take away one and it's twelve. And, so when I teach addition and subtraction, I'll give them tons and tons of sheets of “plus twos” or “plus threes” or “plus nines” – until they really kind of begin to get them in their heads. And, I'll let them hop around the sheet – if they know all the three plus nines, they can fill in all of those and then fill in all the others because all these things help them improve their recall and improve their memory – kind of get in a groove. Math facts are all about sealing them in your brain somehow, so whatever works for them. Sometimes, they'll have a completed sheet and they'll want to put it right here and kind of cheat – you know, kind of look – and I think that's fine because eventually, you'll stop looking, you'll retrieve it from your brain, you'll stop looking at that old sheet. So, whatever kind of works for them in terms of recalling these numbers over and over again, I let them do.