Thursday, March 12, 2015

Pete's Buttons

"Pete the Cat" is always a favourite character of young children! Today we read the book "Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons". In this story Pete loses his buttons one by one and the reader is challenged to think of how many are left on his shirt each time. It's a great reinforcer of subtraction, complete with subtraction sentences to accompany the pages.

We decided to set up a math invitation based on Pete's buttons - we used ten frames, plastic buttons, wooden numbers, and dry erase markers.


The materials were open-ended and it was interesting to see what the children decided to do when visiting the centre.

Some children found a number, matched the corresponding buttons on the ten frame, and then practised writing the number themselves!






Other children wanted to challenge themselves to think of addition and subtraction sentences and record these under the ten frames.



It's interesting how using appealing manipulatives inspires children to think about math in new and exciting ways!


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