What things can you do at home to build positive mathematicians?
So much of this is things that you most likely do anyway, but it doesn't hurt to have a refresh! Also, it is reassuring to know that you are doing all the right things without feeling that you need to sit down with a pen and paper or bring out an activity book! And remember - however you might feel about maths, your children need to feel really positive and they will succeed.
Counting
- Children need to know how to say the number words in sequence
- Songs and rhymes are a brilliant way to introduce counting. BBC nursery rhymes
- Count down as a timer. We have 20 seconds to get our shoes on, who can win?
- Be rockets blasting off. Start with 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 and then when they become really good at that, start from 10.
- Play games such as hide and seek or What's the time Mr Wolf?
Children need to know that numbers tell you how many there are of something, the 'howmanyness' or the cardinal value. It's good to count things that can't be moved or things of different sizes.
- Steps and stairs - count together as you walk up and down stairs.
- Count the number of mini-beasts you might find on a mini-beast hunt or how many rainbows you see on a walk.
-Count the birds on the bird feeder
-Count when you are crafting, baking, jumping over puddles. The constant repetition is what embeds that skill.
They also need to understand that the last number you get to gives you the amount so far
- When you are out shopping, get your child to help you- "We need 5 apples, let's count them"
- "How many dolls are in the dolls house?" Let's line them up and count them one by one.
- Make mud pies in the garden. Make up a recipe for them such as 3 spoons of water, 5 spoons of Cornflour and 1 spoon of food colouring.
Number recognition
- Be number spotters when you are out and about - look at doors, buses, signs, price tags
- Play simple board games that show the numbers - Orchard games are very good and age appropriate.
- Make your own number hunt around the house with post-its
- Draw their attention to birthday cards so they can see which is 'their number' or a siblings number.
- Look at a clock. When the little hand gets to 6, we have our dinner.
- Get out the chalk and write numbers on the pavement - create your own hopscotch board.
- Number books such as Tip Tap went the crab.
- Go on a scavenger hunt and write down what you find eg. 3 stones, 5 leaves. Model writing the number to show your child what that looks like.
Once they are confident at recognising their numbers, try matching the number to an amount. *This is quite a jump to link the skills together so do support them.
Grouping and sorting
This is the idea that objects, shapes or numbers have things in common.
- Can they help you sort the washing - put everyone's clothes in the correct pile?
- Sort their toys - can they group all the dinosaurs from the other animals?
- Can they sort blocks or Lego into coloured piles?
*Deep in lock down desperation - The toilet rolls came out! Here we are sorting the different patterns. You really can use anything!
Ordinal numbers
This is very easy if you have a competitive child. They need to understand which is first, second and third.
This is really easy to do if you play races with cars or when you play games as a family.
Quite often if can be used as you discuss the day. "First we are going to go shopping and then the second thing we need to do is pop to the Post Office"
Subitise
This is recognising quantities without counting up to 5.
-Place with dice and games with dot cards such as Spotty Dogs from Orchard Games
-Play the hidden objects games where objects are revealed for a few seconds
Finally....
Number blocks are a really good way to support your children to learn the value of numbers.
Here are some ideas from the Cbeebies website - number block activities
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