Professor Pig's Magic Math curriculum is written by Ellen McHenry. Professor Pig and his assistant Memory Mouse say numbers that add up to ten are called the magic numbers. Using the magic numbers as a base will help teach children to add other numbers without using memorization.
The Professor Pig Math curriculum is available for free. There are only 5 chapters written but I have downloaded all of them and each chapter has lots of math games to play at home.
We have already played the Ten Penny Game. In this game you give your child ten pennies. Without your child peeking have them place some pennies in your hand. They can now look at the pennies they have left and figure out how many they gave away.
Here is my version of the Stop and Go Game.
On a sidewalk or pavement, draw out some squares using sidewalk chalk. Write the numbers 1-9 in the squares. Have your child hop onto the first number. Aloud, they must state which number they can add to the number they are standing on to make 10. In my example the first number is 8, the child will have to give the correct answer of 2 before they may hop to the next number. (8+2=10)
The child may continue to hop to the next square each time they answer correctly. For a variation of this game, the child could hop on one foot. I like my version of the game because it also promotes outdoor play and exercise.
Thanks for the link to Professor Pig curriculum - it looks rather interesting! I believe that in our schools the approach was the same - being able to add quickly by breaking the number to complements to 10.
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