Hi ymggomez
Thank you for posting your question.
Numicon provide concrete or real representation of numbers. In other words they are a bit like using beads or blocks to work with numbers.
The company actually produce tiles, pegs and rods so it would be good to know exactly which ones you have bought so that we can give you some specific advice?
You mention that your child is 6 years old, so I would recommend that you start by learning what all the individual tiles are. You will have 1 - 10. The orange number 1, grey number 2, yellow number 3 etc.. your child will learn to recognise them by colour, counting and eventually by sight alone. This way when they see the 2 they understand what 2 means. You can put the tiles inside of a bag and ask your child to recognise the numbers by feel as well.
The next step is to use these tiles in whichever maths that your child is doing. So a 6 year old may typically be learning their 5 times tables. You can use the numicon to show your child what 1 lot of 5 is then 2 lots of 5 is and then 3 lots of 5 and so on.
Another example is addition. Your child may be learning how to add 23 and 14 in a column. You can take 2 ten tiles and a three tile to show 23 and then 1 ten tile and a four tile to show 14. Encourage your child to add the tens and then the ones together. The tiles will help your child understand more deeply what is happening when bigger numbers are being added together, even if they are doing the sums correctly. Some children will find it hard to do the sum on a piece of paper so using these concrete examples of what is happening is really useful.
You can also use the numicon to make patterns and sequences and ask your child to copy them or make up their own. This forms part of the foundations of alegraic thinking and geometry.
Anytime you are doing maths with your child, you can bring out the numicon to support their understanding.
If you would like any more examples of how to use the numicon please let us know.
I hope this helps?
Chenali@level-up-kids
