Numeracy @ home

It was fabulous to see so many parents at our Numeracy information session at the Open Night last week. Parents were engaged in some activities and games that they could do at home to help build their children's number skills. Please find below some more ideas for ways that you could support your child at home. You could also ask your classroom teacher for any more fun and engaging home activities. These activities are suggested for Prep-2 but of course are relevant for older students too. In the next edition of Nokuna we will explore some activities to enhance maths at home for the older children.

Children need lots of experiences in making, counting, drawing and talking about numbers. The activities in this section will help your child to develop these skills. You may feel the maths your child is doing at school is different from how you were taught, but you can still support your child in many ways. Make connections for your child by explaining how numbers and counting are a part of everyday life.

Talking about Mathematics

It is important for children to develop specific language skills related to maths. Visits to the playground, or helping at home, provide rich and meaningful contexts to develop these skills. It might take time for your child to use these terms and language effectively, but exposure to this mathematical talk is a strong support for future learning.

Some activities to develop mathematical language:

Use specific terms when asking for items. For example, ask your child to get the ‘one litre’ milk bottle from the fridge, or the ‘one kilo’ bag of flour from the cupboard
When cooking, talk about different measurements used, such as teaspoons, millilitres, litres, and cups. Discuss ideas about empty and full
As you walk, talk and play together describe your child’s movements as they climb ‘over’ the fence, slide ‘between’ the poles, and swing ‘under’ the monkey bars. This helps your child understand language related to spatial awareness
Sorting activities support your child to understand concepts such as ‘same’ and ‘different’. Use recycling as an opportunity to sort items to place in the rubbish. For example, paper, plastic, food waste and general waste.

Counting everyday

You can incorporate counting into everyday activities such as:

Cut fruit into six pieces and ask your child to count the pieces
Count the pieces of toast you cooked at breakfast
Add the total number of cutlery items at the table
Count the number of people travelling in the car or on the bus
Count the number of houses as you walk along the street
Count how many steps it takes to walk from the kitchen to the bathroom
Practise counting when grocery shopping with your child (for example, counting the number of apples you put into the bag)
Encourage your child to talk about the number of things in the pictures they draw.

Hunting for numbers

Number hunts are a fun and engaging activity for your child. Ask your child to find numbers around you. Look at and say the numbers on car number plates, signs, calendars, newspapers, shopping catalogues, speed signs, and houses.

Using playing cards

Playing with cards is always a fun activity, particularly on a rainy day or on holidays.

You can:

Play matching number games like ‘Snap’ with playing cards
Order the numbers on the cards from smallest to largest, or largest to smallest.

Playing shop

Playing shop helps ground your child’s maths learning in the real world while also developing their social skills. One way to play shop is to create a mini-shop at home. Here are a few tips and activities:

Collect food and grocery items and label them with prices written on sticky notes, or prices cut out of shopping catalogues.
Talk about how we pay for items using coins, notes and cards
Make paper money or use play money to buy and sell goods from the mini-shop
Collect old receipts or price tags and use them in the mini- shop
Notice the features of different coins, including their shapes and the animals and people shown. Discuss the differences. Create coin rubbings with pencils and paper
Encourage your child to order food items by height (tallest to the shortest) or by cost (least expensive to most expensive)
Introduce kitchen scales to the mini-shop to weigh foods, such as a box of tea bags or a bag of rice, and order items by weight.

Playing games

Making maths fun and interactive by playing games will help engage your child.

Here are some ideas:

Play ‘I Spy’ or other games to help your child identify shapes, numbers and patterns
Board games are a fun way to involve the whole family with maths. Help your child when rolling dice to count, move, and stop after moving the number shown on the dice
When using dice your child may count all the dots on the die face to determine the total number. Over time they will begin to recognise automatically the value on the die face without counting
The Victorian Maths Challenge is a fun and engaging way for families to engage in real life mathematics and explore problems together: Victorian Maths Challenge
Play number games online with your child.

Playing with shapes

Playing with shapes helps develop your child’s awareness of different shapes. It also improves their hand-eye coordination.

Here are some tips and activities:

Jigsaw puzzles, tangrams or shape sorting toys help teach your child problem solving skills and spatial awareness
Name and notice the similarities and differences between shapes. For example, shapes with curves, corners or edges
Help your child draw shapes, cut them out and sort them into groups. Ask your child to explain why they have sorted the shapes this way
Use cookie cutters to explore different shapes using playdough
Encourage your child to identify shapes in their everyday life, such as a round ball, square window or hexagonal ‘STOP’ sign
Making paper planes together combines many mathematical concepts, including angles, shapes, halving and symmetry
Once complete, you can compare which plane flew the furthest and have fun measuring too
Use building blocks to create a tower. Using the same number of blocks, ask your child to build another tower that’s different to the first tower.

Making patterns

Recognising and making patterns are important maths skills for exploring numbers, shapes and symmetry.

Activities include:

Identify and explain visual patterns on clothing, wrapping paper, buildings, crockery, cards and furniture. Create a scrapbook to refer back to for ideas during arts and crafts
Use coloured pegs, blocks, beads or cutlery to begin a pattern for your child to continue. Once confident, ask them to create a pattern of thei

Advertisement

National Boys Choir of Australia