Handbook to Smith's Arithmetic Author:David Eugene Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Abstract computation. It is a serious error in teaching to neglect abstract drill work. The pupil's attention must be concentrated on the process, not on the app... more »lication or on the logic of a problem, if he is to fix the number facts in his memory. This drill work is largely oral in the first grade, but even here a considerable amount of written work should be required. Text-book. It is not advisable to attempt to use a textbook in this grade. The references in this chapter are, however, to Smith's Primary Arithmetic, Chapter I, which reviews this work. Details Of The First Year's Wohk In Arithmetic Counting (page 1). Children like to count, and counting is the most important single feature in all arithmetic. We count and read numbers a thousand times where we divide once. Drill on counting things, but not always the same class of things. Then drill on counting groups, thus paving the way for fractions, for the tables, and for counting by tens in the second year. All of arithmetic rests on counting. If we count by 2's, beginning with 2, we have 2, 4, 6, 8,10, which is really the beginning of the multiplication table of 2's. If we begin with 1, we have 1, 3, 5, 7, 9,11, which, with the series above, gives the entire addition table of 2's. These features are not taken up very extensively in the first year, but the matter is mentioned here as showing the importance of counting by various numbers. Lengths (page 4). The inch, foot, and yard are the measures of length appropriate to the first year. Measuring can be carried to an unwarranted extreme, but a little of it each day or two is valuable. Notice the value of estimating lengths, as shown on page 5. In all measuring workthe children should use the units of measure, so as to visualize the yard, the foot, and the inch. ...« less