Teaching Addition To First Graders

There are several methods that you can teach addition to a young child. You can use blocks, beads, pennies, number lines, and a variety of other methods. One thing I have noticed in my watching of several videos is that they never seem to address the issue that the child needs to know that the + sign means to add, and the = sign is what the two number combined will make. If they don't understand the symbol they will just memorize whatever you show them, yet never really learn that they are adding two things together. The video below will show a variety of methods you can use to help your child learn addition. Caitlin was very successful with the number line method, and we will use that again this next year, along with flash cards for memorization.