I was blown away by how hard you worked on your maths yesterday and how you found multiple ways of making 7.

Our focus today is going to be on the number…. 8

We use five frames and ten frames at school to help us master our knowledge of number. I have drawn up a quick ten frame (simply two rows of five boxes) to help me with my maths at home. If you or an adult draw one of these today, keep it somewhere safe as we will use these many times during our home learning. You might want to draw it on some strong card to help it last longer.

Your first task, like yesterday, is to make sure that you can count out 8 objects accurately. Count out your 8 objects onto your ten frame and then don’t forget to count them again to check you are right. Remember, pointing or touching to each one as you go can help you to count accurately. Practise makes perfect, so do this lots of times. When you put your 8 objects onto your ten frame, how many boxes are left empty?

Challenge: Now it’s time to investigate different ways to make 8. I saw lots of inventive and creative ways of doing this yesterday for the number 7. You can choose one of these methods or you can use your ten frame to help you. You will need two lots of objects (e.g. beads and buttons or red Lego bricks and blue Lego bricks) for this task. See my example below, I chose to use two different colours of pasta today. 

I counted out 8 pieces of pasta onto my 10 frame. I counted them as I placed them down, touched each one again to double check I had 8 and checked that I had 2 boxes empty on my 10 frame. 

I counted how many of each type of pasta I had - 4 yellow pieces and 4 red pieces. So now I know 4 and 4 make 8. 

If you want a further challenge, can you write your ways to make 8 as maths stories. Can you remember what + and = mean (we touched on this briefly before Christmas).

+ means add or plus 

= means equals or altogether

I found that 4 yellow pieces + 4 red pieces = 8 pieces of pasta. Once I had written my maths story down, I placed my pasta back in the bowl and looked for a different way to make 8.

How many ways can you find to make 8 today?