Math Fun: Whole to Part

Over the past two weeks, we have been learning how to compose and decompose numbers. What does this mean you ask? This is how we put numbers together and break apart numbers. How can we make 10? We can use 4 and 6 or we can use 2 and 8. We have also been practicing writing number sentences to represent  the ways that we make numbers.

This is a lot of brand new information all at once, so I decided to give the students a very concrete way to remember how to make numbers by breaking whole numbers down into their parts.

 

We took divided party plates and used the big section for our whole number. I gave the students a number and they had to find the number card to match. Then they had to figure out how they could break it up into two smaller parts. 

It was very interesting to see how their minds were working as they were doing this. Some immediately used the number and zero as their parts, others moved their kix by sharing them equally...one here, one there, etc... until they had two parts. Others just randomly moved some to one part and some to the other. The fun thing about math? ALL of these ways are correct! You don't always have to get to the answer the same way as everyone else in your class; you just have to get there!

 

Here are some ways that the children "made" their numbers. 

 

 

This was a great way for the students to visualize the concepts of whole and part. They were able to see how their number could actually be decomposed into two smaller parts because they were literally moving the items from the whole into the parts.