Age:
4 years old

Aims:

• To work on the decomposition of the numbers from 1 to 8

• To manipulate the decomposition

• To investigate the decomposition of different numbers

Materrials: Two toy spiders and six toy insects. Two photographs of spider webs. Worksheets with drawings of two webs and two spiders. Worksheets with drawings of six insects.
		Introduction: The teacher tells a story about two spiders that were in the forest and were very hungry. Every day they were competing to see how many carefree insects fell on their webs. First the teacher tells the story and shows what to do with the plastic insects. "There were six carefree insects and 3 of them got stuck in one of the webs, how many fell on the other web?”

Main part:

The pupils work in small groups.

Round up:

After playing around with the webs the teacher asks the pupils: "In the forest there are two spiders waiting for 6 carefree insects, how many insects will each spider trap? On the worksheet there are two spiders drawn with their webs. On a separate sheet there are six insects. The pupils have to paint, cut and paste the webs, deciding how many each spider traps.

Then they describe the number under each web. Here are three examples.

Materrials:

• Eight toy insects
• A black bag

Main part:

Put inside a bag a number of insects. Explain the story that in the hole of a trunk in a forest, a few insects are having a party. Near there is a very intelligent spider walking by and listening to the music. It says, "Uuuuu, now I won't feel hungry anymore”. It climbs in the trunk and takes a few insects. Then the teacher puts the insects in the bag. One child has to put his/her hand inside, count the plastic insects and should say how many the spider ate.