Fun maths for doing at home with reception/KS1 child

[ineedbanoffee]

Hi there,

Just got my DD's reception report and was so thrilled and proud to read about how hard she tries, how kind she is, and so on :) She was given three 'exceedings' (in reading, managing behaviour and listening), and all the rest 'expected'. I know the levels should be taken with a pinch of salt and that the most important thing is she's progressing, and I'm thrilled that there is nothing we need to worry about.

However, I do feel that DH and I are much better placed to support her with her literacy skills - we put lots of effort into the reading, and it has showed.

We do much less mathsy stuff with her - and in February we were told she was doing brilliantly in maths and on track for 'exceeding' by the end of the year. She was really keen on it at that point, and we were doing mathletics at home (which she loved). I lost the login when I changed my laptop at Easter, and have asked school a couple of times but they haven't sent it to me. Should have pestered more.

Not worried about the maths at all, but would love to know what people do at home to support maths and make it fun - games, apps, etc. Don't want her to lose interest just because we focus too much on one thing than another.

Thanks!

[ineedbanoffee]

When I say 'games', I mean real life games too ... (board games, activities, etc)

[melonribena]

Cooking
Crafts including measuring
Counting songs in the car - how about a cd?
Jigsaws

[Lweji]

My usual response to posts like this is: she's in Reception.
She should be having fun at home, not doing the same as in school.
You are parents, as well, not teachers.
Fine to do some educational games, but even playing cards and then counting the points in the end helps with maths.

Even older children and adults need to chill.
You may end up finding her getting academically tired at some point if you over do it, or stop enjoying learning.

Day to day life is full of opportunities for maths. Just involve her in your activities and start noticing how you can use normal play to practice maths.

And science.

[Ilovewillow]

Maths is easily accessed in day to day life as others have said - measuring when cooking, finding shapes, counting cars, road signs on the way to school - playing shops with real money etc!

For something more formal but fun we have a subscription to the school run which will take you through out infants and primary and covers all areas of the curriculum. They have great downloads and good pointers for parent!

[ineedbanoffee]

lweji, I wouldn't dispute any of what you say about home being for fun and relaxing - it is, and it certainly is for us. But I didn't ask for judgment about what I should or shouldn't be doing with my child - I asked if anybody has some ideas for fun games we could play. She likes playing games.

To put it another way, I read to her everyday, and she reads a book to me most days. I wouldn't say that's overworking her academically - I'd say that's just a nice thing we do together and it obviously has helped her grow in confidence with her reading. I wanted a few ideas for things like that maths-wise. So I'd appreciate only getting suggestions on that, rather than assumptions that I am trying to be a schoolteacher rather than a parent to my child, or that because I asked if anybody has any good maths games up their sleeves my child doesn't get to chill out enough.

Cards is a great idea - any card games you play?

[ineedbanoffee]

PS - science is easy. We go to our local natural history museum all the time (mostly because it's free and they can run riot). She loves all the forest school stuff she's ever done (in preschool and then in year 1 they do it next year) and loved the nature topic this year and wanted a minibeast party, so we had a party where we did bug hunting and made bug houses, climbed trees etc, and last year she got a microscope for her birthday and she loves getting leaves and grass and little bugs and looking at them in the garden. Somebody got her a volcano making kit for her birthday, and obviously we do normal every day stuff like making ice cubes/jelly, cooking etc. We live near woods and she's always collecting stuff (mostly crap I end up filling my handbag with). My mum bought her a gears set at Christmas and she still plays with it all the time. She grew some flowers in the garden last year and we'll do it again this summer.

Of course we involve her in day-to-day stuff with maths. Just looking for some other fun activities we can do together too.

[nellodee]

I'm a maths teacher here, so almost exactly the opposite position to you. We love our games here. Particular mathsy favourites are the Sleeping Queens card game, (my 4 year old needs some help, 6 year old can do by herself) and Sum Swamp, both of which involve doing simple one digit addition. We also enjoy Jaipur in pairs. Its a grown up game, so children will definitely need adult support, but still very simple. When counting up at the end, we stack the tokens in piles summing to 10. We also have a game called Pizza Fraction Fun. We play very simplified rules, so its just about trying to make whole pizzas by spinning a spinner and taking the relevant piece, but it still gets the children used to the idea of fractions as different sized slices of a whole. Snakes and Ladders is awful, but the Junior version of Monopoly works (kids love it, I find it horrendously dull, personally).

We also have a sweet shop on a Friday night, where I give the children 15p and put prices on the various sweets. Obviously, this is a real favourite.

I don't think any of these things are hot housing my children, just having nice family fun with a little maths included.

Oh, and the best present Santa ever bought was a pair of "The Original Little Hands Cards Holders" (from Amazon). It really helps make card games much more fun.

[user789653241]

www.khanacademy.org/math

www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/5-7-years/counting

www.mathgames.com/

[LuchiMangsho]

Lots of the Orchard Toys games. Sum Swamp which has been mentioned above. Peaceable Kingdom has a bunch of cooperative games are good for strategy. Under the Sea is a good Learning Resources thing for basic maths. Someone mentioned Junior Monopoly. It is very dull but my son who is quite mathematically adept at 4 can even play the grown up version with help.

[noblegiraffe]

I'm a maths teacher and my DS in Y2 really likes maths. I admit I'm not very good at mathsy activities but he likes being asked maths questions, like adding and subtracting, then times tables, and recently he liked being asked fractions of amounts (we did things like 1/5 of 20, then went over how to find 2/5, 3/5 etc going up to 6/5 and so on). Reinforcing quick methods like finding a quarter by halving, then halving again. He'll ask me questions and I'll explain my methods as I do it. We've also talked about negative numbers, really big numbers, infinity and so on.
Fluency in mental arithmetic will be really useful as he progresses up the school so the more practice the better.

[ineedbanoffee]

Fab tips here - thank you!

[SisterViktorine]

We play sum swamp with multi-sided dice to up the anti a bit. You can buy a variety pack of dice (1-10, 1-20, multiples of 10 etc) for a couple of quid on amazon.

Maths dudes- again you can change the values/ operations you play with to fit ability.

If you want a website we like Maths Whizz.

[Kanga59]

shut the box for number bonds to 12

[ineedbanoffee]

This is brilliant - thank you! Good for rainy day summer holiday activities, too :)

[lilydaisyrose]

We're in Scotland so unsure of age of your child, but my 7 & 8 yr olds love a website they use in school called Cool Maths Games.

[ButtonLoon]

My DD got exceeding in maths this year - DH has a degree in maths and she sees him doing complicated sums on scraps of paper which is helpful for her - she sees it as a skill adults use. She hates competitive games though!

I talk a lot about maths stuff and how it relates to everyday life - why the numbers on the houses skip by two, what half a teaspoon means in a recipe, simple multiplication and division (we have x cakes, how may can we each have)... stuff like that!

[ButtonLoon]

Oooh, also using manipulatives - we have a set of counting animals but you can use pennies or beans or whatever to help work out sums or explain something.

[ineedbanoffee]

Thanks all - exactly what I was looking for :)

[Autumnsky]

For some children, math work book is fun as well. I used to buy a book for KS1, there are stars stickers included, once you do a page, you can put a star sticker on that page. The book are colourful, DS certainly like it.

[Autumnsky]

And it only takes 5-10 minutes to finish a page, it certainly wouldn't stress DC out.

[OneArt]

I took my DC to WH Smiths and let them each choose a reading book and a maths book if they wanted to. No worries if they decided just to have a reading book (or neither). There are themed ones (eg DS chose star wars) which are fun for little ones.

[Obeliskherder]

Junior Monopoly is improved greatly by swapping the £1 notes for real 1p to 10p coins. Let them give change etc. My youngest was playing full Monopoly from YR but it's a long game. The junor version is at least short! Top Trumps is good for place value and some include decimals (eg Baby Animals IIRC). I find the ones based on real things play better than the cartoon based ones.

Like Noblegiraffe maths happens a lot here but just through general life. You prob do more than you realise. Away from actual arithmetic, there are algorithms, 3D shapes, money, time. These are my excuses to make my children assemble ikea flatpacks, buy things in shops and tell me the time/ time things for me. My DS also likes sudoku.

In KS1 a lot of DS's learning has been in translating things from real life problems to arithmetic. "What's 8 divided by 4?" is a much easier question than "how many slices must I cut this pizza into, so that each of us gets 2 slices?". To my amateur understanding, the curriculum these days seems to be making that sort of "translation" of word problems seems to be a lot more important than manipulating larger numbers.

[ineedbanoffee]

I absolutely fucking hate Monopoly, so I might try some other suggestions first :D

Mostly this is because my dad made us play all the time when we were little except a) he always cheated, and it took us years to realise; and b) even when he's clearly won the game he won't let you fold - he'll keep finding tactics to keep you in the game for as long as possible even though it's now impossible for you to win. So there are interminable hours and hours in which you have lost to somebody who cheated to win but who won't let you out of the game.

Ha ha. Sort of. But still - I can't even look at that bloody game without feeling my life draining away ... :D

[mrsmortis]

Orchard Games have already been mentioned. One of theirs called Pop to the Shops has an inexplicable appeal to every reception/KS1 child in my life. I have no idea at all what is so brilliant about it. But they all seem to love it! As well as the normal moving based on a dice roll you have to buy things so there is money involved (and knowing that if you pay for something that costs 25p with a 50p piece you should get a 20p and a 5p in change)

[Greatballs]

Hi, a little bit less obvious, but maybe try games that use skills related to maths like logical reasoning, spatial awareness and puzzle solving.

My 6 year old is really into a game called animalogic at the moment - it involves working out sequences and patterns. She loves it