My youngest is always full of questions – often the questions center around dinosaurs or animals but lately we have been having lots of chats about having two more or two less.  Often around food eg  Mom if I have 4 biscuits and you gave me two more than I would have 6 biscuits – and yes that probably is just my child wanting more biscuits but I am going with the thought that he is getting his head about the concept of adding and subtracting two.

So I thought it would be good to play a simple game with him.  I made him a very simple dice – I used the free Cube template from Twinkl and wrote on each different side of the dice the following  +1, -1, +2, -2, +0, -0.  Then I got our Lego number cards out (again a Twinkl download but from their Gold package – one which we have used a lot) and I also unpacked some of the Lego Duplo blocks for him.  I choose to use all the number cards up to 20 as my son sits and listens to his big sister doing her maths on a regular basis so he has no issue with the “bigger number” but you could also limit the number cards to 10 if you wanted.

The idea of the game was this – He would turn over a card to select his number and then roll the dice and based on what the dice said he would have to adjust his number eg 10 +2.  Some of the simple sums he knew already and he would shout out the answer and select a new card but some those that he did not know or was unsure of her would use his Lego to help him figure it out eg build a tower of 16 blocks and then take 2 away.

And no big surprise big sister also joined in – okay so the sums where far to easy for her but she enjoyed taking turns and I think we are going to make her a different dice for tomorrow with larger sums on so that when she joins in she can have more challenging sums.

And the end result – both kids sat together and did maths for far longer than normal.