Maths, first lessons

More than and Less than

A wonderful sister I know pointed me to a site called 'Littlest Scholars' which had this idea for teaching more than and less than. Basically you use a crocodile to teach the concept, the site had a set of free cards with numbers and the more than and less than sign for number 1 - 20. I made up the cards then using craft sticks, my trusty glue gun and some other materials I  made up some crocodiles. This is what the work looked like on the tray, I should point out that the more than crocodile on the cards would have been in the glass dish as would the other ones:

The cards with the numbers and a space to put the correct sign, a dish with the signs in and two crocodiles to remind you

I showed Nuh how to use the two crocodiles on the table to eat up the numbers and to then take one of the number cards and read it by looking at the second number first and saying is '2' bigger or smaller than '4'. If its smaller which sign to we need, so he would choose one of the cards from the dish and place it on the number mat.

Adding to 10 

I have store all my maths counting objects in some tool drawers, this allows Nuh to choose which ever object he would like to use to do his sums with. This works well as it keeps them all neat in sets of 10 but also he loves using the drawers.

I have various objects in these that he can use for sums like novelty rubbers, pegs, glass beads, pom poms, marbles.

After the debacle with getting Nuh to write out his answers I decided that I would always give him number stickers so that he could use a sticker to provide the answer on the sheet, until he is ready to write them. I made a blank addition worksheet that basically has the addition sign and equals sign on them which means i just need to fill in the numbers.

As per instructions in the Karen Tyler Maths album I am teaching him to add to 10 by tackling each number separately so we started with all the combinations that make 10, then 9, then 8 etc.....
I may be wrong but at this point you are not trying to drill them so that they remember these combinations you are simply making sure that they understand the formula for addition and that various number combinations can make the same number. I think...... please correct me if I am wrong as I am not a trained Montessori teacher.