Grade 1 · Math Mountain
Grade 1 math in Canada is numbers to 20: counting reliably, adding and subtracting across ten, and meeting shapes, length and coins for the first time. Daily Academy practises each of those separately, so you can see whether a wrong answer is a counting problem, a fact problem or a reading problem.
54 activities in this subject · free to use · no card to start
Canadian provinces write their curricula separately and word them differently, but the grade 1 expectations below are common across all of them. Daily Academy is skills-based rather than built to any one province’s document — see how it maps to your province.
Saying the number words in order and matching one word to one object are different skills, and the second is the one that fails. A child who counts seven chicks as six has usually touched one twice or missed one — not forgotten a number.
Counting from one always works, which is why it is hard to give up. Counting on from the larger number, and then knowing the pairs that make ten by heart, are the two steps that make adding within 20 possible without fingers.
Fourteen says the four before the ten, and children write 41. This is a feature of English rather than a misunderstanding of value, and it clears up quickly once teen numbers are practised as “ten and some more”.
Straight from the library, at the difficulty they are served at. Every question carries an explanation that appears after answering, whether the answer was right or wrong.
Counting & Number Recognition
What number comes just before 10?
Why: 9 comes just before 10. Before means one less, not one more.
Number Sense
There are 3 cats and 6 dogs.
Are there more cats or more dogs?
Why: There are more dogs. 6 is more than 3.
Addition
Which one makes 5?
Why: 4 + 1 = 5. The others make 2, 4 and 6.
Subtraction
6 − 3 = ?
Why: 6 − 3 = 3. Counting backwards is one way; knowing that 3 and 3 make 6 is a faster one.
Mastery is estimated per skill, never per subject, so strength in one can never average away a gap in another. Each page below carries a question you can ask tonight to check it yourself.
By the end of grade 1, most Canadian curricula expect a child to count, read and write numbers to at least 20, compare two numbers, add and subtract within 20, know the pairs that make ten, name and describe simple 2D shapes, measure length with a ruler, tell time to the hour and half hour, and recognise Canadian coins.
Yes, and it is useful while the facts are being built. It becomes a problem later, when the working memory it uses is needed for something harder. The aim in grade 1 is not to ban fingers but to make the small facts automatic enough that fingers stop being reached for.
Five to ten focused minutes on most days. At six, attention is the limit rather than time — a short session at the right difficulty builds recall faster than a long one that ends in tears.
Twenty minutes, five stops, and every question pitched at your child rather than at their year group. The daily mission is free and stays free.