Study Guides
These Worksheets Follow the Japanese Curriculum — What That Means If You're Outside Japan
diglabo's worksheets are built to Japan's national curriculum. Here's what differs from other countries, what's the same everywhere, and why they're still usable wherever you are.
How to Teach Addition with Carrying — Clearing the Hurdle with "Groups of 10"
8 + 5, and your child runs out of fingers and freezes. The cause is that composing and decomposing 10 isn't automatic yet. Here's how it's taught in Japan, and the order to practise it at home.
How to Teach Subtraction with Borrowing — Why It's Harder Than Addition
13 − 5 is a significantly harder calculation than 8 + 5. Here's why, how to build the "subtract from 10" reflex at home, and how to use the practice worksheets.
Learning the Times Tables — Beyond Rote Chanting, and the Rows That Trip Children Up
Chanting alone tends to stall at the 6, 7 and 8 rows. Here's the order that works, what the hardest facts have in common, and how to run chanting and understanding in parallel at home.
Teaching a Child to Tell Time — Getting Past "The Long Hand Is on 3, So Why Is It 15?"
A clock face carries two scales at once: the 3 means both three o'clock and fifteen minutes. Here's what makes it hard, and the order to build it up in everyday life.
Learning Units of Length and Capacity — Build a Feel for Quantity Before Conversion
They know 1 L = 10 dL but freeze on the problem. Unit trouble isn't a memory gap — it's the missing feel for what 1 dL or 1 cm actually is. Here's how to build it at home.
Where Division with Remainders Goes Wrong — Fixing "The Remainder Is Too Big"
Mistakes like "17 ÷ 5 = 2 remainder 7" follow a clear pattern. Here are the three causes, the link to the times tables, and how to handle remainders in word problems.
Why Fractions Confuse Children at the Start — "Cut in Two" Isn't the Same as "One Half"
Fraction trouble starts in grade 3, not grade 5. The missing word "equally", the shifting "half of what", the reversed sense of size — and how to build the base that carries through to common denominators.
Place Value in Decimals — Preventing "0.7 + 0.5 = 0.12"
"0.7 + 0.5 = 0.12". "2.5 × 10 = 2.50". Decimal errors come from place value. Here's how to teach 0.1 as "one tenth of 1", and what to secure at each grade.
Teaching Percentage to a Child Who Doesn't Get It — "See It as 1" Before Any Formula
Percentage is the hardest topic in elementary math. Why memorising the formula doesn't work, how to build the sense of "seeing the base amount as 1", and how to extend it to percentages and rates.
What Children Who Can't Do Word Problems Have in Common — Behind "But the Arithmetic Is Fine"
Full marks on calculation sheets, and then the hand stops on word problems. The cause isn't vague "reading ability" but specific, identifiable stumbles. Here's how to tell them apart and what to do at home.