Effects of learning addition and subtraction in preschool by making the first ten numbers and their relations visible with finger patterns

In this paper, we report how 5-year-olds’ arithmetic skills developed through participation in an 8-month-long intervention. The intervention program aimed to enhance the children’s ways of experiencing numbers’ part-part-whole relations as a basis for arithmetic skills and was built on principles from the variation theory of learning. The report is based on an analysis of assessments with 103 children (intervention group n = 65 and control group n = 38) before and after the intervention and a follow-up assessment 1 year after the intervention. Our findings show that the learning outcomes of the intervention group were significantly higher compared to those of the control group after the intervention and that differences between the groups remained even 1 year after the intervention. In particular, the results show that children participating in the intervention group learned to recognize and use part-part-whole relations in novel arithmetic tasks.