The Change Game
Materials:
Large quantity of golden bead material
A large tray with a bead cup
A small tray with a bead cup to use for making exchanges
Rug
Purposes: To help the child become familiar with the mechanism of changing (10 of one category equals 1 of the next category).
Age: 4 ½ – 5 ½
Preparation: The child has worked with the Formation of Numbers and can read complex numbers conventionally.
Presentation:
Invite a small group of children (can be done individually). Ask a child to bring a rug and lay it out horizontally.
Show the children the large tray and fill it up with LOTS of each category of beads.
Use the cup for the units and only take a few thousands.
Have a child bring a smaller tray to the rug.
Everyone will sit around the rug with the large tray in the center.
Ask each child if they know how much is in the tray and explain they will count it to find out.
Assign each child a quantity to remove from the tray to the rug in front of them.
Tell the rule: when they are counting, they stop at 10 and everyone will help say “stop!”
Show the child to lay the units in a vertical line as they are counted.
When they get to ten, all say stop.
Explain that ten units get exchanged for one ten from the supply.
Place the units into the cup. Have the child go to the store of material and exchange the 10 units for one ten and bring the ten back.
The child will give the ten to the child who will be counting the tens. Continue in this way for all the units. If the child is left with less than ten, ask if they can exchange that amount-no.
Continue this way for all categories, arranging the beads so they reflect the next family, (line of units, square of tens, stack of hundreds) counting, stopping, verbalizing the exchange, passing the new bead to the person in charge of that category. Place the remaining quantities that are left on the large tray in the correct family order
Count the final quantity with the children and say the number conventionally.
Control of Error: None.
Following Exercises: None
Pedagogical Notes:
Bring enough units, tens and hundreds for the children to perform an exchange at least twice. We do not want more than nine thousands at the end-there is no quantity to exchange them for.
Children need this before moving onto dynamic addition. This is the key for them to be able to create their own large numbers and to independently work the problem to find the answer.
A pair of children could do this together.
This work helps to solidify the concept that ten of one category equals one of the next higher category.