Textbook 1

Here is how Gattegno's Textbook is organized. 

1. Free Play
   1. You may already be doing this, and it has been going grand. You never had kids so excited to do math.
   2. This is part you love and yet are most skeptical about. Children pick up a lot of information by playing. They grasp ideas intuitively and this shows up in their ability to manipulate the objects to create per their desires.
2. Literal Work
   1. LETTERS AND MORE LETTERS To keep children from being overwhelmed by numbers and to focus children to observe the structures, students will be taught to express their observations using letters first.
3. Number Work (Study of 1 -10)
   1. Gattegno introduces the idea that the white rod will be used as a unit of measure. Basically, white equals one. Many children will have already decided this for themselves at some point. That is okay.
4. Application
   1. This is merely math concepts expressed in story form. How many purple rods would you need to give each of the four boys one purple rod? How many red rods do you need to give two to five boys? Very basic and very simple.
5. Number Work (Study of Numbers up to 20)
   1. This is a continuation of the earlier Number Work with additional arbitrary information introduced as need.