Counting One to One using Materials- The Shopping Game

Based on the JAM data from the previous year and conversations with parents and teachers I looked at I focussing on One to One Counting on Materials. This week we played a shopping game. Children had to roll the dice, count the dots and find the number on the number line. Some children could find the numbers easily whereas some of them had to start from 0. One child went past the number she was looking for and needed support and prompting from the teacher. Children read their number and then go shopping. They need to buy the correct number of items to match the number and the dots on the dice.

Luisa needed support and uses the number line. She counts from 0 to the number she is looking for. I am pleased that she is trying and building her confidence with number. She also knows that their are resources available to help her work out the number.

Luisa went shopping. 

She one to one matched the items to the numbers on her dice. 

A number line is used at this stage to support children who are still developing their number knowledge.
Once they are confident you can try taking it away and ask children to visualise the number line in their head. (That will be  my next focus.)
You can always bring it back into the lesson if needed.

The children had lots of fun playing this game. At the end of the session they could recognise the number 1 pattern on the dice (easiest) and the number 6  (highest number on the dice). They had an opportunity to be creative in selecting the items and also pretended eating them at the end which was the fun part.

I could also make this activity more challenging by asking children to roll two dice, count, find the number on a the number line (1-20 number line) and go shopping.