Home Schooling, Early Years: Mental Arithmetic

Oliver and I have done quite a bit of 'counting' with counting sticks by now.  He doesn't quite get everything right while using those, but that doesn't surprise me as we kind of working with numbers 1-20 and back, and I think it's quite a bit to get your head around of, when you are 4.

However, seeing that Oliver enjoys working with counting sticks the most out of everything we do to do with numbers, I'm trying to gently introduce his fingers as substitute for the counting sticks.

This brings me on the subject of 'Counting in your head'. Not quite sure what's the best way to go about it. He knows how to count to 20 and back really well and quick.  However, it's much more difficult  for him to name a number larger by one and one smaller by one, for example when the numbers are out of sequence. So we are working on this and on the mental arithmetics which we can build from there.

I suspect that getting to grips with the idea of mental calculations is going to take us a while, past the very simple '1 + 1 (sweet),  examples.  Allowing plenty of time for this one to start sinking in properly!