St Joseph's Catholic Primary School, Hendon

At St Joseph’s, we aim to teach our pupils about the importance of maths in every-day life. Our lessons focus on ‘Preparing all pupils for all futures.’ Therefore, it is so important that our pupils understand how maths is linked to our lives in and out of school. It would be great if you could talk to your child about the maths they are seeing each day.

For example:

          - cooking

- going to the shops

- distances they are walking/driving

Websites (As always when using the internet, please ensue your child is supervised)

Here are some suggested websites that you may like to visit with your child. In most cases they will need to be shown how to do the activity. It is important to note that there is a wide range of different activities for children of all ages so you need to pick one that is suitable for your child. If they find it too difficult, don’t worry just move onto something else. Playing maths games needs to be a positive experience for you and your child!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/primary

www.mathszone.co.uk

www.topmarks.co.uk and click on the ‘games’ tab

http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/maths/ or go to the woodlands junior homepage and click on ‘maths zone’.

https://play.numbots.com/#/intro (Y1 and 2 have been provided a log in by their teacher)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/numberblocks

There are a wide range of games below. It is important that you pick ones suitable for your child.

Maths surprise alarm

One person sets a timer (e.g. kitchen timer) and both people have to think of as many ways as possible to make a target number e.g. 5, 10, 17. The person who thinks of the most ways wins. You can write on a mini white board if you have one as children sometimes prefer using these so they can amend their work if they make a mistake. Your child may like to use counters or dried pasta pieces to help them ‘see’ what the numbers look like. An alternative is for your child to count within the time. When they can do this they could then order number cards or write numbers down.

Odd hops and even jumps

As you count odd numbers (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) you and your child have to hop. As you count even numbers (0, 2, 4, 6, 8) you and your child have to jump. Once your child realises it is the last digit that determines whether a number is odd or even you can challenge them by saying larger numbers (e.g. 26 or 341).

Then swap and let them say some numbers and you do the actions.

Hide the number

On a number line or hundred square cover one/some of the numbers (using a piece of card or a counter). Can your child work out what the covered number is? Now see if your child can explain how they got to that answer e.g. ‘it comes before 13 and after 11’ or ‘it is in the twenties column’. Then ask your child to hide a number e.g. “hide a number with four ‘tens’ in it” or “hide a number that is odd”.

Toy parade

• Your child could line up some of their toys and you could use order language with them such as first, second, third etc.
• You could then re-arrange them and use positional language such as ‘which animal is in front of the brown teddy’ or ‘which toy is next to the digger?’. Once your child understands these concepts (in front, behind, above, below, next to, besides) you can then encourage them to use this language e.g. they might say “the cow is in front of the doll”.
• You could also ask ‘which animal is bigger/smaller than the doll?’ then ‘which animal is the biggest/smallest?’ Again, once they understand these concepts encourage them to use the words in full sentences.

Sorting

Using hoops or circles on a large piece of paper you and your child could sort toys or numbers. Let them think of ways to sort the items and then suggest some other ways e.g. big/small, brown/not brown, 4 legs or more/ less than 4 legs, is an animal/is not, is bigger than 10/smaller than 10, is odd/even etc.

Know your ‘number bonds’

You could use counters, dried pasta pieces or toys for this activity. Get 10 objects and work out how many ways you can split them
into two groups e.g. 9+1, 5+5 etc. This will help your child learn their ‘number bonds to 10’. Your child could also try and find number bonds to 20 or100.

What’s the card?

‘Get to 10’ (above) can also be played with any number as the total e.g. you might pick two cards and tell them the total is 7 and they have to work out all the different combinations of cards you might have. You then turn over one card and they have to work out what the other card is. Again, this can also be switched around so they work out the total for you.

Guess the shape

Hide a shape in a bag and describe it to the other person. The other person has to guess what it is. Another version is that the ‘guesser’ has to ask the ‘hider’ questions about the shape. It might be useful to have duplicates of all the shapes in front of the guesser to help them. A further version is that
all the shapes are in the bag and your child has to feel them and guess what they are. 2D shapes can be made with thick card and many 3D shapes can be found around the home e.g. food packaging.

Estimating and measuring length

Ask your child to guess how many e.g. hand spans the table is etc. Then ask them to measure it to see how close they were. You can also use footsteps, felt tip pens, pieces of pasta (the list is almost endless but ensure the things you are using are all the same length i.e. different sized pencils are not suitable). Children may also be able to use ‘cm’ and ‘m’ and could use a ruler or tape measure for measuring.

Post-it Challenge

Write a number on a post-it note and then stick it on the other persons’ head without them seeing the number. They need to ask you questions to help them work out the number e.g. ‘Is it odd?’ or ‘Does it start with a 5?’. Answers can only be ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It may be helpful to your child to have a number line or hundred square in front of them to look at.

Code breaker

You will need to write the alphabet out and give each letter a corresponding number. Then create calculations that when solved, the answer is linked with the corresponding letter and it makes a word e.g. 5 + 5 = 10, 10 – 7 = 3 and 6 + 1 = 7 and if 10 corresponded with ‘d’, 3 with ‘o’ and 7 with ‘g’ then the answer would be ‘dog’.