Last week, I added an addition maths activity to help the children to develop the counting on strategy. The counting on strategy is basically that when adding two numbers you choose the first number or, preferably choose the larger number first, and from that number continue adding the second number to it. For example, in the activity seen below, the child throws the first die and says ‘ four’. The child then throws the other die which contains dots. Then from the number 4 the child continues counting on the dots, ‘five, six and seven’. Then the child feeds the pig a total of seven units.

I added some additional objects for the children to insert inside the pig.

It was fun to take the objects outside the pig.


The children responded very well to the activity and they play feeding the little pig several times during the day. They were learning the count on strategy in an enjoyable way.

The next step of counting on can be counting on mentally by using the mind to keep the first number (or bigger number) and the fingers for counting on. For example, I ask the child to add 5 and 3 lollies. The child will keep 5 in his mind, and he will continue from there, counting 6, 7 and 8 using his fingers.