Usual Year Group Learning: Year 1+
Does your child know what odd and even numbers are? Although this knowledge is learned in Year 1, the theme progresses through the year groups, usually when your child encounters doubling and halving.
As well as learning the sequence of even numbers: 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and odd numbers: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 you can challenge your child to identify odd and even numbers of tens or hundreds and discuss which numbers would be the trickiest to double or halve (watch the video above to find strategies).
Grab your Dienes again! It’s a great resource for odds and evens, doubling and halving. Another favourite resource is Numicon – the ‘bumpy’ pieces are always odd but what happens when you combine them?
Take your child’s learning further and start to investigate what happens when you add together odd+odd, even+even, odd+even. Are the results the same always, sometimes, never? Can they create some rules?
Essential Knowledge
- Odd number plus an odd number make even numbers
- Even number plus an even number make even numbers
- Odd number plus even number make odd numbers
- 50 is an even number but has an odd number of Tens
What to Ask You Child
- Which is easier, halving 20 or halving 30?
- How would you halve 54?
- What happens when you double an odd number? Do you get an odd answer? Why?
- Think of a number greater than 75 that’s even
- Tell me a number with an odd amount of Hundreds and Tens.
