School Time 10/4 - Plus One and Numbers

I asked Becca if she wanted to do school time and she wouldn't say yes. I explained that we weren't going to work on drawing today, we could work on numbers instead. I wanted to practice doing "plus one" with her, and looking at our numbers. I asked if she wanted to do that for school time and after a few seconds she said yes.

We got all seated at the table, and went to get started. We had some sibling tantrums we had to work through so it was quiet enough to focus, but then I said I wanted start by writing down what each of the numbers looked like, then we'd practice some plus one's, then we would work on the numbers a little bit more.

I said the first number was one. I asked Becca if she remembered what a one looked like. She wouldn't say yes. I asked if she wanted to draw it with me and she said yes. I held her hand and we drew a one on a sheet of paper. Then I asked if she knew what number came after one. She said yes. I said yep, two comes after one. I held up one crayon and said "when we have one crayon and add one more, we get two" and added another crayon. I did this for every other number as well.

We repeated the same process, she remembered what two looked like and was willing to draw it with me. She also remembered what came after two, and she remembered what a three looked like, and she wanted to draw it with me. She wouldn't say that she remembered what came after three, so I told her it was "one, two, three..." I waited until she looked at me, then I said "four". She didn't remember what a four looked like, and she didn't want to draw it with me, so I drew it for her and showed her the four. She said she remembered that five came next, but she didn't remember what a five looked like, but she did want to draw it with me.

Next I drew a couple more things for our activity. I put "__+1=__" on the bottom part of her plastic board. Then I would attach three numbers up above and put a number in the first blank. I talked about how "plus one" was trying to figure out what number came next, and how it was like when we measured things and sometimes our number wasn't quite enough, we had to "add one" more to get it high enough. I asked if she wanted to try doing some plus one's. She said yes.

I put "1+1=" and stuck on the numbers 2, 4, and 3 as options. I showed Becca the board and said we needed to try to figure out what was one plus one. She immediately looked at the 2. I talked a little bit more about how that means we need to figure out what number comes after 1, and how if we have one (held up one finger) and add another one (held up another finger), then how many does that make? How much is one plus one? Again Becca looked at the 2 and then back at me. I said that was right and we celebrated.

Next I put "3+1=" and stuck on numbers 2, 4, and 5. We did the same thing. Becca wouldn't pick one of the numbers. She looked at all of them but wouldn't pick. We worked through the same hints, but she wouldn't pick. Then we counted from one up to 3, and I paused and waited. When she looked at me I said, "4". I asked if she could find the 4 and she picked the 2. I said that was a 2. I showed her which one was the 4 and we practiced tracing the 4 a few times.

After that I put "2+1=" and stuck on numbers 2, 3 and 5. Same review. Becca looked at all the numbers and after a delay she looked for a long time at the 3. I asked if she was picking the 3 and she looked at me. I said that was right and we practiced drawing the 3.

Next was "4+1=" with the numbers 2, 3 and 5. Again she had a hard time picking. Eventually we counted up and Becca looked at me and I said 5. I showed her where the 5 was and we practiced drawing it. I said it seemed like she remembered 1, 2 and 3 pretty well, but 4 and 5 were harder for her. We did "2+1=" one more time and very quickly she picked 3.

Then I took off all the signs and put 1-5 randomly on the board. I showed Becca the board and told her I wanted to play a finding game, and see if she could find the numbers. We went over them together one time, tracing them and counting up from 1 to 5. Then I asked if she knew where the 3 was. She looked around and after a moment she stared for a long time at 3. I asked if that was 3 and she said yes. I said that was right and we cheered. Then we did 1 and she found it right away and looked back at me. Next we did 4. She looked at 2 and back at me. I said that was a 2 and we traced the 2 again. She looked at 3 and almost back at me but then away. I said yeah, that's 3 not 4. Then she looked at the 4 and back at me. I said yes, that's the 4 and we celebrated. 2 was next, and she got that one very quickly. For 5 we had some coughing interruptions and ended up doing a hand game before trying again. After we came back to it she looked at all the numbers and eventually looked at 5 and then back at me quickly. I said yes and we celebrated again.