Doubles Addition Cupcakes

"Cupcakes" is in the name simply because of the fun cards we used. The children enjoyed drilling simple addition doubles facts.

The Cards

Made from bulletin board strips...

 The strips had cupcakes in several colors. I cut them apart and have saved them for quick use for games. Today I used the purple ones I had left. On the back I wrote the addition facts for the doubles from 0 + 0 =  to 14 + 14 =.  I did them both in vertical and horizontal form. I did to 14 simply because that was the number of cards that I had.

Introducing the Cards

First we did a little activity. I set out the 0 + 0 =  cards. I showed them two empty spots. I asked how many counters we would have if we combined/added the two empty spots. ZERO, of course, was the answer. Next they each put 1 counter in each space. I asked how many we would have if we added 1 + 1 and they shouted TWO.  We continued adding one counter to each pile and stating the new addition fact. Wesley, age 6, knows many of them, but soon realized that the answers were counting by TWO and so he predicted what the next answer would be. This was a great discovery for him to make and one I had not planned.

We finished going through all the cards (facts to 14 + 14 =) just so Wesley could see that his predictions continue. Then we got down to drilling some of the facts. We used only the first six facts (up to 5 + 5 =) to now play some games. Even though the first things we did were not REAL games, by calling the such, the children excitedly played. (They thought of it as play, because, after all, I was calling it a game.)

First I gave them each a set. Wesley had the horizontal form and Diana, 4, had the vertical. They laid them out in front of themselves and we drilled the facts in any way I could think of.

1. I placed them in order and drilled them each through their cards. They would read the fact and give the answer.

2. Next, I skipped around, pointing to cards out of order. They again read the facts and gave the answer.

3. I mixed up their cards and they stated only the answers to each fact.

 Here Diana is giving the answers to her fact cards. While Wesley finds his matching card.

Next we played some REAL GAMES.

Game 1 Since Diana is two years younger I started with One At a Time Take. For this game I shuffled all the cards. I held up one card at a time and they took turns giving the answer. If they answered correctly, they got to collect the cupcake. (Calling them "cupcakes" instead of cards, just makes it more fun.) If they gave an incorrect response, the other person got to give an answer and collect the card. We did this several times until they were both doing it pretty rapidly.

Game 2 I called this Speed Cupcake Take. This time when I held up the card both Wesley and Diana tried to be the first to give the answer. Wesley won the first two cards and Diana was getting discouraged, but I reminder her that she knew these now and if they tied, she would win the card. She sat back up and won the next card, mostly because Wesley wasn't paying attention...but she was so excited. She tied him a couple times and ended up with 5 of the 12 cards. However, before Wesley could count them and declare he had beat her, I swept up the cards and shuffled them and said, "Let's go again." The second game she got 7 of the cards, but again I tried not to make a big deal about a "winner." Because, if you have a winner, there must be a loser...and no one wants to be the loser.

We had fun with this quickly made game and the children are memorizing these facts. Tomorrow we will do them again and probably add one or two more fact cards.

Games make drilling so much fun. Flash cards could be used, but making the "pretty" cupcake cards and calling it a GAME, made it much more fun.