Review: Addition Facts That Stick
This is a review of using Addition Facts That Stick by Kate Snow to teach my 4 years-old addition.
During the SIP of 2020, I wanted to start teaching my 4 years-old addition but was lost on how to teach math. Came across a recommendation for Addition Facts That Stick and since I was lost for ideas, decided to buy this books from Amazon and gave it a try.
The approach of this book is to use a method called ten-frames to teach math in a visual way. Ten-frame is not unique to this book and you can do a simple search online to find additional info on this subject.
Some people learn things visually though if you learned math like me, I was taught to memorize math. One of my biggest challenge while using this book to teach my four-year-old was trying to figure out whether he learns visually. Even after finishing the book, I still couldn’t figure out if my son learned math via ten-frames or if he memorized it by doing the exercises which came with the book. I’m guessing it’s a bit of everything, maybe someday when he’s older I can ask him about this experience.
The book is split into 6 chapters or what the author call weeks. Each week progresses further on learning addition. I would say the chapters are very well thought out from the intro to ten frames to simple addition of 1's and 2's to adding numbers which makes ten to sum of none ten.
Each child will move through the chapters at different speed. Though each chapter should take a week to complete, my son moved through the first two chapters in a couple of days. However, we spent nearly three weeks each learning adding nine and adding eight. Some of the language in the book gave me the feeling that this book was intended for the maturity of a first grader, so it made sense that some of the concepts in this book took a bit more time for a four-year-old to grasp.
Though intro to math is a very rudimentary subject and most parents can write their own lesson plans, the biggest reason I would recommend this book are the games the author attach to each lesson to help complement the material being taught. Each chapter has a different type of games and in my opinion, children learns best when learning is fun. The games are simple but effective. My son loved the games and almost on a daily basis wants to keep playing the games. All the game boards are attached to the book and the only thing you need to provide is a deck of cards or some coins. I recreated each game board with my son which added to the whole experience.
After about two months, we have finished the whole program for addition. Finished here is more than just glossing over the chapters but really spending the time to learn and understand the material. We are now ready to move on to the next book about subtraction.
