Maths: Easter egg patterns
Easter eggs are ideal for inspiring exploration, discussion, understanding, and the creation of a variety of repeating patterns.
Mathematics
Maths: Count your chickens
Fun counting within play inspired by chickens, involving physical movement and thinking skills.
Mardi Gras maths
Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Day or Mardi Gras, falls on the first day of March this year. Try out some of these activities, combining cooking and eating pancakes with some mathematical skills, and make it a learning opportunity for all.
Maths: Money for beginners
The aim of this article is to look at children's books and stories about money, especially those suitable for early years, and to start to explore money and simple economics through practical activities.
Maths: That's the shape of it!
There may no longer be an early learning goal specifically devoted to understanding shape, space and measure, but settings are still expected to provide rich opportunities for children to develop their spatial reasoning. Here I include some of the best books on this area of learning.
Maths: Thrills and spills
In the first of a series exploring water play, Jenni Clarke suggests how to make the most of opportunities for joyful, spontaneous maths learning, by seizing ‘teachable moments’ and using observation to gauge progress.
Focus: Mastering maths
Balance child and adult-led learning to build children's knowledge and skills.
Maths: From a solid base
Children are at their most self-absorbed in the construction area which means there are strong opportunities for maths learning. Jenni Clarke suggests ways to support this through in the moment planning.
Maths: Taking the biscuit
Cooking is one of the most enjoyable ways to apply mathematical thinking and will help children to transfer their new found counting skills to many other activities and everyday tasks. Observe how they begin to correct their own mistakes.
Maths: A stones throw
Pebbles are a beautiful, tactile resource which can be used for matching pictures with real objects, investigating number and counting outdoors. You could also lay a trail to support the use of positional language, says Hilary White.
Maths: Grand designs
Children's homes are characterised by exciting shapes and patterns which can feature in their play. Jenni Clarke describes spontaneous scenarios, as part of in the moment planning, which can be exploited for rich mathematical learning.
Maths: ‘The Twelve Days Of Christmas’
Find out how this traditional festive song can help to consolidate number and sequence recognition, counting forwards and backwards, practising prepositions and also learning a variety of action words.
My little mermaid
Take a look at this month’s practical supplement which has a wealth of seasonal ideas to support children’s learning through play. Use our expert pointers on the Characteristics of Effective Leaning to create meaningful observations and enhance your knowledge of each individual child.
Maths: Follow a pattern
Seize the moment to support children to explore ideas to do with repeating patterns as they follow their own play and exploration. Snakes can provide the inspiration – by threading beads on to a string or using loose parts outdoors.
Maths: Hop in the box
Observe how motivated children become when they create their own number games and develop positional language by following each other.
Young children’s maths learning in danger of taking a backwards step
Changes to the Early Learning Goals for mathematics in the revised EYFS do not reflect the input from experts and research, and will not support children to develop a love of the subject, says the Early Childhood Mathematics Group.
Maths: Creepy crawlies
Bug hunts can be a focus for indoors as well as outdoors. Tap into children's fascinations, with cues to count, categorise and respect these tiny creatures.
Communication and language: Roma adventure
The Lost Homework is a great book to link creative activities such as junk modelling and cooking while helping children to understand a chain of events.
Maths is a piece of cake
Explore these tips which can be passed to parents at home for making maths learning a fun and stress-free experience.
Maths: Testing the water
Use the ‘Big’ books of Julia Jarman to involve children talking spontaneously about mathematical concepts such as full and empty, big and small and near and far.
Get baking!
Prepare for Easter by involving children in some simple baking activities that will also develop their maths and literacy skills.
Maths: Master bakers
Easter baking is an opportunity to practise problem solving. Do children know what to do if they take their cakes out of the oven and they are not properly baked yet? How can they tell if a cake is cooked all the way through? It's time to decide!
Maths: All wrung out
Hand washing may seem old-fashioned but it is an eco-friendly alternative to using a washing machine. Get children involved and help them to consolidate their understanding of how a series of steps lead to a successful outcome.
Maths: ‘Ten brown cones’
Jenni Clarke provides a guide to how mathematics can be enhanced through in the moment planning, with continuous provision which helps practitioners to identify and extend learning opportunities for all children.