Appropriate For Classes: Pre-K to 2nd grade.
Estimated time to complete activity: 15-30 minutes a day.
Materials needed:

• Blocks
  
• Legos
  
• Pencils
  
• Bottle
  
• Caps
  
• Coins
  
• Buttons
  
• Dried Beans
  

Instructions or description of technique:

Everyday objects around your house can become the manipulative needed to help your child with addition, subtraction and multiplication.

Gather blocks, legos, pencils, bottle caps, coins, buttons, dried beans, etc. for your tools.

Using these manipulatives, ask your child to arrange them in groupings of fives and tens.

Create problems for your child to solve: how many groups of fives do you have (e.g., with their hands let them touch 1 group + 3 groups = 4 groups).
In subtraction, have them take groups away (e.g., 7 groups - 2 groups = 5 groups).

In multiplication, take each group of manipulatives times the number of groups to figure out how many pieces they have (e.g., 3 groups x 5 manipulatives per group = 15 manipulatives).

Using fives and tens is an easy cognitive way to learn addition and multiplication of difficult numbers. Introduce the concept of 'rounding up' early on; (e.g., when adding 9 + 6 it is easier to round it up to 10 + 5 to arrive at 15; when multiplying 12 x 5, it is easier to take 10 x 5 + 2 x 5 to arrive at 60, your child will memorize the 10's and 2's times tables quicker than the 12's times table).

In the grocery store or restaurant, round up the prices to the nearest ten (or rupee) to guess how much the bill will be.

Ask your child to set the table for 4 people, each person needing a dish, fork, knife and spoon; how many items will they need (they can count or multiply)?

Send them to get you things; "please get the milk, 2 bowls, cereal and 2 spoons", how many items is it? With coins, they can learn to multiply the coin amount with the number of coins they have (e.g., 10 paise is one tenth of a rupee, how many 10 paise do you need to make Rs 1.00?).

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