The counting game

All right, hi everybody, I'm here with Ayesha today. Hi Ayesha.

Hi Michelle, how are you today?

I am excellent because we're about to play one of my favourite Maths games. How are you?

I'm very excited too this sounds good.

OK, so I know you've been playing the counting game, but I think you've been playing it so you're always counting up to a number?

That's correct.

And today what we were thinking about is we could show how you can also play it in the reverse so our target today is zero.

OK.

And also we wanted to show you how when you're playing this game you can use some equipment to help you. So, I've got these bundles of paddle pop sticks over here. Um now I know how much is in them because I've made them, but what do you think when you see this?

Hmmm, I think there might be ten in there. So I might double check that if that's OK.

Of course, it's exactly what mathematicians should do. So I can see that there's three and two more, which is 5. I'm noticing there's another five there, and together that's 10, so I trust that these are going to be 10. Because if you laid them along side you can see that pretty much 10. So we need to workout how many we have. But because we've been learning about other ways of determining how many without having to count we could organize our collection so that we can see how many that we have and use our skills of looking at thinking. What a great idea!

I've got an idea. Ok. Why don't we use a ten frame.

Great idea!

Oh I can see what you're imagining in your brain there is Ayesh is that there's like a 10 frame around that. Is that right?

Spot on, and I know then I can go like this. That will mean that I have 10 boxes or rectangles uh-huh and so one whole 10 frame, an one more than 11 and eleven 10s. We rename that is 110.

Alright, so that's where we're starting from today, 110. So Ayesha when you play you can take away 1, two or three of our bundles and we count back at the same time and you can start because I'll also show you how we can record our thinking.

Sounds good. So I will take 2 bundles away, so that's 100. 90.

Ok. And I think I might say um take away two also some now 80 and 70. And can you record my thinking there Ayesh?

80, 70 Your go.

I'm going to take away three bundles, so sixty, fifty, forty.

OK, I'm going to take away one more so it is down to 30 three tens. 30.

And I can take away the three 10s that are the left, so 20, 10, zero.

Congratulations. Good game! Alright now what I wonder Ayesha is if our friends at home would like to have a play, you can start from any number that you like. We started at 110 today but I also wonder if I could have done something differently to have won. Wonder what you could have done? Over to you.