I'd love to help you dive into basic addition today, but first, I want to make sure I tailor our session perfectly for you.

To help me do that, could you let me know if you are learning this for yourself, or are you perhaps helping someone else learn basic math?

It is wonderful that you are taking this step to learn for yourself. We will take things one clear step at a time, starting with what addition actually means.

At its core, addition is just putting groups of things together to see how many you have in total. For example, if you have one apple and you get another apple, you are putting those two groups together to find a new total.

So, to answer your question: when we put $1$ and $1$ together, we get $2$.

We can write this as a math sentence:

$1 + 1 = 2$

To make this visual, let's look at how we can show this combining process with simple blocks. This will help make the concept of "putting groups together" completely concrete.

Does this way of thinking about addition make sense so far?

I would be happy to generate a practice worksheet to help you solidify what we have learned about combining groups so far. This will give you some hands-on practice with basic addition.

I have set up the worksheet for you above. Give those practice problems a try to see how comfortable you feel putting these small numbers together.