Simple Addition-single digit addition with all positive numbers

Adding is a form of counting. We could use a method like the ancient sheep herders who used piles of rocks to represent sheep. In the morning as the sheep went out to pasture, he would take a rock from the pile that represented the sheep in the barn and put it in a pile that represented sheep out to pasture. The sheep herder had a rock for each sheep in the barn to start with. At night when the sheep came back to the barn, he took a rock from the pile of rocks representing the sheep out to pasture and put it in the pile representing the sheep in the barn. If a rock was left, he knew that a sheep was missing. As time went on man assigned number names for the different amounts of rocks and began writing the number names and manipulating them instead of a bag of rocks. It may be helpful to think of the bag of rocks when you first learn to add. Say we want to add the numbers 3 and 2 as in the addition problem 2+3=_. We could take 2 rocks put them in a pile and then take 3 more rocks and add them to that pile and then count the total amount of rocks in that pile. We would find that we had 5 rocks in the pile.

Each number tile in the scratchpad has a corresponding amount of dots on it. The 8 tile has 8 dots, the 3 tile has 3 dots and so on. You can use these dots like the ancients used rocks. You can find the sum of 2 or more numbers by dragging them close together and then counting the total dots on all of the number cards you are adding. Find the sum of 8+5 by counting the dots on the 2 cards shown.

Zero (0) is a special number and represents the value of nothing. The 0 card doesn’t have any dots on it. If we add 9+0, we get 9. You can show this with the number cards by placing a 0 and 9 card by each other and counting the total dots.

When we see addition problems like 2+3=, it is assumed that the numbers 2 and 3 represent the same kind of units. For instance 2 sheep + 3 sheep = 5 sheep. Sheep would be the type of units in this case. We would not say 3 sheep + 2 trees =. We can add 2 inches + 3 inches = 5 inches or 6 cups of flower + 2 cups of flower = 8 cups of flower.

We use numbers to represent things like distance (Miles or Kilometers), weight(Pounds or Kilograms), loudness(Decibels), speed(Mph or Kph) and more. We can add numbers and not know the type of unit we are adding and it doesn't effect the sum of the numbers. The rules for adding stay the same no matter what we are adding.

You can also use a number line to add numbers. 5+3= Can be found by starting in the center of the number line at 0 also called the origin, count 5 graduations to the right, then count 3 more. You will see that you land on the number 8. You could also go right to 5 on the number line and then count 3 more graduations.

The terms in addition problems have names though we don't seem to use them vary much. The numbers you add together are called addends and the total reached when you add up the addends is called the sum. A really long time ago the first number in a column of numbers to be added was called the augend. The numbers in a column to be added were also called summands at one time.