Today's job: make 10 every single time. Cookies, muffins and cloths full of surprises — all for one clever idea: ten is a team of friends.
My tray holds exactly ten cookies. But I keep forgetting how many more I need to fill it up. Can you help me make ten?
Bea already put some cookies on the tray. The tray holds 10. Tap the empty spots to fill it up — count out loud as you go!
our number bond
There are 10 cookies. Some are hiding under the cloth. Count the ones you can see… then guess how many are hiding.
tap your answer
Turn over two cards. If the numbers make 10, they stay awake and turn green. Remember where the partners hide!
a pair that makes ten
Pairs to find: 0&10 · 1&9 · 2&8 · 3&7 · 4&6 · 5&5
turns so far: 0
Trace over the dotted numbers with a finger or a crayon — and say the sentence out loud as you write.
Three little stories. Tap show me the tray if you need a picture, then check.
An egg carton holds exactly 10 cups. Drop in 6 spoons of jam — how many cups are empty? Real ten-frame, real hands.
Roll 10 balls of dough. Squash 4 flat. "Four and six make ten!" Then eat the evidence.
Climb 10 steps. Stop on step 7. "How many more to ten?" Shout the answer on the last one.
The make-ten strategy. Everything a child will later add — 8 + 5, 9 + 6, 17 + 5 — is done by borrowing up to ten first. Today's lesson is the whole engine behind next year's arithmetic, dressed as cookies.
Three skills are trained in order:
Don't rush to the abstract. If counting on fingers is happening, that's the brain doing its job — fingers are ten frames.
Use the same little script every time and the idea sticks fast:
Key vocabulary: ten frame · full · empty · partner · how many more · altogether · hiding · equals.
Too hard: go back to 5. Use the top row of the frame only, so 5 is the goal. Real objects, five buttons, five biscuits. Say the sentence for the child and let them fill in the last word.
Too easy: ask the backwards questions in Station 2 — "I can see 4. 4 and 6 make 10, so 10 take away 4 is 6." Then try frames of 20 (two ten-frames) and "make 20". Or let the child set a puzzle for you and deliberately get it wrong.
Time needed: about 20–25 minutes with a grown-up. Two short sittings are better than one long one.
a brave 6-year-old
has filled the trays, lifted the tea towels, hunted every partner and written the number talk: