Building Fact Family Houses for Numbers Up to 20

Here is where this shows up in real life. Organized information is easier to remember. That is why people use charts, shelves, and labeled boxes. This is worth learning because a picture of the structure keeps parts and wholes from getting mixed up.

Watch for it today, and when you spot it, tell someone what you noticed and how you knew. Ask yourself where else the same idea might be hiding, then go and look.

Here is something worth knowing today. Draw a house with a triangle roof. Write the whole number in the roof and the two parts in the two rooms below. Underneath, write the four sentences that family makes. Try the family 9, 8, and 17.

The roof holds seventeen. The rooms hold nine and eight. Then write your four sentences. Building houses for many families makes the pattern automatic, and soon you will see it without drawing anything.

Try covering one number. Draw a house, fill in all three numbers, then cover one with your thumb and find it again from the other two. Doing this many times is how fact families move from a page you copied into knowledge you own. Practice this a few times and it will start to feel easy.