What Did You Roll?

During our recent Technology class, Michelle invited the children to an activity that would enhance their understanding of the relationship between numbers and quantities.  She gave each child a die and asked the children to pair up with a friend.  One child in each pair would roll their die and on a large piece of paper record the numeral that represented the amount of dots on their rolled die. Afterwards, she or he needed to collect objects to represent that amount.  Then, the same was asked of their partner.

Michelle than explained that by putting an addition (+) sign between the two numbers rolled, and an equal (=) sign after the second number rolled, that was called an equation.  She encouraged each pair to solve their addition problem. Once they came up with an answer, Michelle asked the children how they can prove the answer is correct to which most Kindergarteners replied, “We can count the number of things we have”.  

This activity helped Kindergarteners to practice dot configuration recognition, use objects to represent addition,  and write a 2-digit addition equation.