Stamp Game Addition
Adding with the stamp game tells the same story as golden bead addition — build both numbers, slide them together, trade tens — but now in symbols. Start with sums that need no trading, then move to the exciting ones that do.
Materials
- The stamp game (or your homemade cardstock stamps)
- Small slips of paper with addition problems written vertically, one per slip
- Pencil and paper for recording answers
No materials at home? Use the virtual Stamp Game.
Before this lesson
Aims
Direct
- To add four-digit numbers with symbolic material, first without exchanging, then with
- To connect the traded stamp to the little carried 1 in written addition
Indirect
- Preparation for adding entirely on paper
- Reinforcing that a column can never show ten or more — ten of a kind always becomes one of the next
Presentation
- 1 Write a no-trading problem such as 1,325 + 2,143 vertically on a slip. Read it together.We are going to put these two numbers together.
- 2 Your child builds 1,325 in stamp columns near the top of the table.
- 3 Below it, with a clear gap, they build 2,143 — two separate numbers, visible at once.
- 4 Slide each column together, always starting with the units.Now they become one number. Units first.
- 5 Count each column and write the digit under the problem: 8 units, 6 tens, 4 hundreds, 3 thousands. Read the sum: 3,468.
- 6 Another day, present a dynamic problem: 1,568 + 1,679. Build both, slide together, and count the units — seventeen!Seventeen units — can one column say seventeen? No. Ten of them can become one ten.
- 7 Trade ten units for a 10 stamp and place it with the tens. Carry on up the columns, trading wherever a column reaches ten, until every column reads nine or less. Read the answer: 3,247.
- 8 Show the same problem worked on paper and point to the small carried 1s.This little one on paper is the stamp we traded. It was never magic — you have done it with your hands.
Points of interest
- Two numbers visibly becoming one when the rows slide together
- A column briefly holding seventeen stamps — clearly too many — and the trade that fixes it
- Discovering before combining which columns will need a trade
Control of error
- A finished column may never hold ten or more stamps — if it does, the work is not finished
- Recounting each column checks the written answer against the material
- On the virtual material, the Check button recounts every column with you, marking each ✓ or ✗
Vocabulary
- addend
- sum
- combine
- exchange (carry)
- column
Variations
- Add three numbers at once — the columns get satisfyingly crowded before trading
- Dress problems in stories: two jars of pennies, two towns’ populations
Extensions
- Before sliding rows together, predict which columns will need a trade, then combine and see
- Circle the carried 1s on the written problem and match each to a trade made with the stamps
Follow-up work (pencil & paper)
- Print a sheet of multi-digit addition problems. Your child solves each with the stamps and writes only the answer on the page.Printable: Multi-Digit Operations
- Once confident, reverse it: solve a printed problem on paper first, then prove the answer with stamps.Printable: Multi-Digit Operations
- Have your child write their own addition problems for you to solve with stamps — they check your work column by column.
What comes next
When trading up feels easy, Stamp Game Subtraction turns the trade around — breaking a ten into units in order to take away. Stamp Game Multiplication also builds directly on this lesson.
Next in this strand: Stamp Game Subtraction