Hello kids! Today we're going to learn about counting and a special trick called multiplication. Look at these apples! We have 3 groups, and each group has 2 apples. If we count them one by one: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. That's 6 apples total! But counting like this takes time when we have many groups. Let's learn a faster way!
Great! Now let's see how groups work with addition. Here we have 4 groups of stars, and each group has exactly 3 stars. Instead of counting each star, we can add the groups: 3 plus 3 plus 3 plus 3 equals 12. This is called repeated addition because we're adding the same number over and over again!
Amazing! Now we can learn about multiplication - it's like a magic shortcut! Instead of writing 3 plus 3 plus 3 plus 3 equals 12, we can simply write 4 times 3 equals 12. The first number 4 tells us how many groups we have, and the second number 3 tells us how many items are in each group. Multiplication makes counting so much faster!
小朋友们，今天我们来学习加法原理！加法原理就是把不同的选择加起来。比如说，如果我们有三种不同的选择，每种选择都不重复，那么我们就可以把它们加起来得到总数。
乘法原理是什么呢？当我们有相同的组，而且每组的数量都一样时，我们可以用乘法来计算总数。比如这里有3组苹果，每组有2个苹果，那么总共就是3乘以2等于6个苹果。
让我们看一个生活中的例子。小明要选择穿什么衣服上学。他有3件上衣和2条裤子。每件上衣都可以和每条裤子搭配，所以总共有3乘以2等于6种不同的搭配方式。
这里有个很有趣的发现！乘法是可以交换的。看这些方格，我们可以排成3行4列，这样是3乘以4等于12。我们也可以排成4行3列，这样是4乘以3等于12。两种排法得到的答案都是一样的！就像在教室里排桌子，不管怎么排，桌子的总数都不会变。
Great job learning multiplication! Let's practice with some fun examples. Here we have 3 pizzas, and each pizza has 8 slices. How many slices do we have in total? We multiply 3 times 8 to get 24 slices! Here's another example: if we have 2 bags of candy and each bag has 5 candies, we have 2 times 5 equals 10 candies total. Multiplication makes counting so much easier and faster!