This week the children have been learning about have continued to explore the composition of numbers within 10, focusing on the ‘special case’ of doubles - when 2 equal parts combine to make a whole. The children started the week by using their skills of comparison to identify when 2 sets were equal or NOT equal. We used a range of familiar representations including dice and fingers to explore the idea of ‘2 equal parts’, before finding the whole by combining the 2 groups. The children have been using their subitising skills, and have started to recognise & ‘know’ the double when they see 2 parts the same size for larger numbers within 10 for example they can look at 2 groups of 4 and say 'double 4 is 8'. The children are also starting to recall some doubles facts when an image or physical resource is not available to support them.

We have been using the following stem sentences to embed the learning:

8 is made of 4 and 4.

4 and 4 make 8.

Home Learning Challenge

Create a group of about 20 items using raisins, cereal hoops, chocolate buttons or similar. 

Play together to make arrangements with the snacks that show doubles by creating 2 equal groups. Talk through the questions as you play and create the arrangements: Have you got the same number on each side? How many have you got altogether? How do you know?

After making the doubles, you could draw some pictures together to represent the doubling arrangements you have made. We would love to see any photos of this play on Tapestry - the children really do love sharing these observations with their classmates.