Helping your child at home

Supporting families with Maths

Children make progress best as mathematicians when they regularly repeat skills and practise them until they become embedded.  This can be quite a long process sometimes, and so the use of the context of an exciting game or interesting activity can be highly motivating.  In our experience, our children learn best when they are having fun and that's what games are for!

Here are some ides for how you can help at home:

• Play board games.
• Sing maths songs and rhymes.
• Find numbers wherever you go, focus on number recognition and talking about what the children know about the numbers.
• Count forwards and backwards in steps of 1, 2, 5, 10 or even 3 (Y2)
• Count objects when you are out and about e.g. count numbers of red cars or items in the supermarket
• Buy things with real money and count the change.
• Notice how an analogue clock works and talk about the face and hands.
• Time actions such as brushing teeth, driving in the car, baking a cake etc. and use the words seconds, minutes and hours.
• Compare amounts and sizes using the words “this one is bigger than that one, smaller than, shorter than, heavier than” etc.
• Do some baking together and measure ingredients using scales.
• Find 2D and 3D shapes in everyday items, talk about these shapes and discuss their properties.
• Make repeating patterns using threading toys, building blocks or Lego.
• Practise adding and subtracting using toys or sweets!

Useful websites:

Useful resources: