Odd and Even Numbers: Odd House, Even House

Two paper houses stand side by side on this 1st grade page, one labelled odd and one labelled even, and a strip of nine numbers runs above them. The sheet shown offers 11, 10, 8, 5, 12, 14, 1, 13 and 19. Three numbers have already moved in and each shows its dots: the 3 in the odd house has one filled pair and one hollow circle left over, while the 6 and the 4 in the even house show three pairs and two pairs with nothing over. The child writes each remaining number into a box in the right house.

The dots are the argument. Odd and even are usually taught as a rule about the last digit, and that rule is quick but empty; here the worked examples show why a number is odd, with the leftover drawn as an open circle that has no partner. Because the given numbers are small, a child can check any of the nine by drawing their own dots beside it, and the house metaphor gives sorting somewhere to happen.

One sheet, nine numbers, two houses. Each house is printed with eight boxes, more than the nine numbers will fill, so expect empty boxes and say so before you start. This is the readiness page of the odd-and-even family: the pair-counting and fair-share faces work the same idea with pictures, and the ones-box page turns it into the digit rule.