Rainbow Facts would have to be one of my favourite concepts to teach in the early years of Primary School Mathematics. There are almost unlimited activities that can be done to reinforce this important learning, but here are a few we’ve been having fun with during tutoring sessions recently that might also help your young learner.
#1 - Visual Representation
Visual representation takes a concept from the abstract and makes it tangible for learners. This allows for deeper engagement and learning as well as better retention of the concept.
I used our SumBlox and Grimm’s stacking rainbow (not sponsored, but see link below product information) to make this visual representation even more engaging and hands on. You could also easily do a similar activity using a whiteboard to draw the rainbow in coloured markers, draw in chalk on the driveway or a blackboard, or with crayons or felt pens on paper or carboard.
#2 - Speed Challenge
Once a student has a basic understanding of mental addition strategies such as this one, we want them to begin increasing their fluency and the speed challenge is a great way to do this.
We completed this task by having the student race to match the pairs of rainbow facts using the SumBlox. However, you could easily substitute these for numbers written on paper, number puzzle pieces or laminated cut out numbers.
I encourage my tutoring students not to compete with each other, but rather compete with themselves to do better, so this challenges them to simply beat their own previous time.
#3 Rainbow Towers
Rainbow Towers has been a bit hit with my tutoring students since I introduced them to SumBlox.
Since the blocks are proportioned, they allow students to see whether the number pairs they have chosen are equivalent to 10, and then use each set to build a strong tower.
I love seeing their enthusiasm for this activity and the way the concept ‘clicks’ when they are able to use multiple senses to manipulate the blocks with their hands and visualise the addition to 10.
I hope this gives you some ideas to help your little learner become super confident with their rainbow facts, so that they’ll soon be addition superstars.
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