Length, Time & Graphs: 1st grade math in Norway

Comparing and measuring lengths, telling time to the hour and half hour, and reading picture graphs.

Sail deep blue fjords, past wooden stave churches and red fishing huts by the sea. Characters here greet you with “Hei!” (hi in Norwegian), and eggs hatch into hybrids of animals like Atlantic puffin, black guillemot, orca and harbor porpoise.

What your child practices

Follows Measurement & Data (1.MD).

• Longer and shorter

  Compare and order lengths, and compare two things using a string as long as one of them.

  1.MD.A.1

• Measuring with units

  Measure a length with same-size units laid end to end, with no gaps or overlaps.

  1.MD.A.2

• Time to the hour and half hour

  Read the clock at o’clock and half past, and say times like 4:30 as "half past 4".

  1.MD.B.3

• What happens first?

  Put times in order, and find the time one hour or half an hour later.

  1.MD.B.3

• Picture graphs

  Read picture graphs with three rows: how many in all, how many more, which is most.

  1.MD.C.4

• Sorting and counting

  Sort things into groups, count each group, and find how many in all or how many are left.

  1.MD.C.4

Try a problem from Norway

Every problem is a short story set in the world. These are real problems from the game. Kids get endless new ones with different numbers.

Common mistakes, and how to help

Every wrong answer in Mixmonde is planned: it points to a named mistake, and the tip after a miss explains it with that problem’s numbers. These are the mistakes this world watches for, grouped the way the grown-ups’ dashboard shows them.

• Reading the question

  The math works, but the answer is to a different question: a number already given, a halfway step, or only part of a two-step problem.

  Mistakes we catch: mixed up longer and shorter, picked the middle one, mixed up earlier and later, gave one row, not the difference, left out a row, mixed up most and fewest, counted everything and counted only one group.

  Try at home: Read the question aloud together and ask “what are we trying to find?” before solving. Point at the question part of the sentence.

• Order and direction

  The right idea done the wrong way round: taking the smaller digit from the bigger one, dividing backwards, swapping x and y, or flipping more and less.

  Mistakes we catch: read the string the wrong way and counted back.

  Try at home: Use “more” and “fewer” in everyday talk: which plate has more grapes, how many fewer? Line things up side by side to compare.

• Units and measuring

  The number is fine but the unit is off: a missing conversion (cm and m), the ruler not started at zero, or area mixed up with perimeter.

  Mistakes we catch: counted only part of the row, allowed gaps or overlaps, thought bigger units give a bigger number and ignored the size of the unit.

  Try at home: Measure things at home with a ruler, starting at 0, and with hand spans or shoes. Ask which is longer and by how much.

• Time and money

  Reading the clock or counting money: hour and minute hands mixed up, treating an hour as 100 minutes, or coin values.

  Mistakes we catch: mixed up the hands, read the next hour, mixed up o'clock and half past, thought half past comes before the hour, thought half past comes before o'clock and mixed up an hour and half an hour.

  Try at home: Read a real clock at meals and bedtime (“the short hand is on 7”). Sort and count real coins by value, not by how many.

• Choosing the operation

  The arithmetic is fine, but the wrong operation was picked: adding when the story takes away, or multiplying when it shares out.

  Mistakes we catch: added instead of subtracted and added instead of subtracted (or the other way).

  Try at home: Act out word problems with toys: “3 birds, 2 fly away.” Ask “are we putting together or taking away?” before any numbers.

More Grade 1 worlds: Numbers to 100 · Adding & Subtracting to 20 · Adding & Subtracting to 100 · Shapes & Equal Shares · Equal Groups & Money