Dear Cyndi,

Thank you for posting. What I did and still do with my children is make up story problems that they need to put into a part whole circle set. The key for me in helping my children grasp this is that I put their names into the story. This way they took ownership of the story. For example...."Daniel, you have 10 cars. You gave 3 to your sister. How many cars will you still have?" If there was a hesitation of, what do I do now, I would give him the abacus and say, "How many cars did you start with? Is this the whole or the part? Put that on your abacus. Sometimes from there my child would see what makes 10 if he starts with three." Does this make sense? Also, play go to the dump. As your child plays this game have part whole circle sets there and have your child plug in the 10 as the whole and use the sets to figure out what parts are needed for the numbers in your child's hand.

I hope this helps. Let me know how it goes and if there are any other questions you might have.

Sincerely, Rosine