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Teaching addition to children using the concepts of carrying and borrowing is easy if you remember to do the following:

~ Concretise the experience

When teaching addition to children, the first lesson objective is to make sure that the children know what numerals stand for. They must understand that the numeral 0 (zero) means nothing, that 1 (one) means a singular item, that 2 (two) means 1 more than 1 item and so on by demonstrating that in a concrete manner.

Involve your children in counting items they see in the real world. When you go shopping, get them to count the number of fruits, cartons of milk, boxes of chocolate, pieces of fresh shrimp and so on, together with you. They will soon realize that 1,2,3 is not just a song that Michael Jackson or the Muppets sang but that each of those numerals mean a concrete amount. Move on to counting more than 10 only if your children can demonstrate confidently the numerals 1 to 10.

~ Use items are easy to manipulate

Use items that are easy to manipulate and lasts a long time. These include popsicle sticks and bread tabs. I prefer bread tabs to that are colored and similar in size to popsicle sticks. When dealing with amounts more than 10, bread tabs are easier to arrange and you can use a different color to connotate different amounts. Get a few friends involved in helping you collect them and you would have enough to last a life time in a few months.

I would not use items that may connotate another amount for a beginning Mathematics learner. For example, while coins are attractive, in counting a ten-cent coin as a unit, because the numerals 10 may appear when the coin is flipped to the tail, children may think that 10 means all the 1, 2, 3 and so on that they are saying out as they count.

~ Get children involved rather than just demonstrate to them

Not many children learn well by just watching and listening to you telling them what you have to do. Let them be the ones moving the items and saying out the numerals as they do so. Be prepared to get some children to work through many examples before they actually grasp the concept of addition.

~ Be very structured

A little change in your approach may confuse a young child, especially when he is learning disabled. For example, in adding two numbers, a child may be unduly stressed when you use yellow and blue tabs instead of the usual white and green tabs. Make slight variations only when the children have mastered one part proficiently enough to demonstrate

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