I need maths inspiration to help my Y1 dd! How do you encourage maths?

[AnxiousElephant]

DD is 5.9 but I really have no idea what she knows in maths! She is brilliant in reading and I know what she does. We read every night, but I feel as though we don't really do enough maths games.
Please can you share your games?

Count everything. Then ask what one more is, then one less, maybe move on to 10 more or ten less. Discuss shapes, and why is a triangle a triangle not a square? Talk about more and less, about giving and taking, about sharing (we have a cake we need to share between Josie Daddy and Mummy, how many pieces do we need?). Get her to guess how many sweets in a bag, then count them. Measure how long things are. Bake, getting her to help weigh the ingredients, which is bigger the teaspoon or the tablespoon?

Cooking is very very good for maths btw.

Oh we do most of that anyway Perhaps we do more than I thought She can discuss shapes, number of sides, corners etc, adding and subtracting 1 ...... will try tens I think.
Things to help with time, money, ? Times Tables?
We do fractions like a quarter, third, half, whole etc.
Need ideas for adding more numbers together.
What do they learn in KS1? Expected iyswim.

number understanding's a bit of a developmental thing as well, so don't panic too much. My dd is 5.10 in Y1 and I'm not overly impressed with her maths either... we count money, ('change' is beyond them at that stage) add up a couple of simple items, 50p and 10p, or I ask her to get a 10p treat for herself and her two brothers, well how much will that be? She's now got good enough to figure out the hoever-many for a quid, so perhaps my work is done
Other stuff to try is counting in 2s and 5s; and maybe get a little timer of some sort and time yourself doing stuff. I bet you actually DO do loads of maths, what about baking (weighing, counting, timing) and every time you go to the shops, check whether something's missing off the shelf (counting and subtraction) It doesn't have to be "explicit" learning, it's far better to do it all in a real life context. Find every number plate with the number '4' on when you are out in the car or walking - and play bingo with a bit of paper with a bunch of numbers on, when you are out for a walk - they have to find the numbers on doors, number plates, bus stops, telephone number on shop signs, and to make it harder you might say you can only use two car number plates or house numbers [evil]
Just think about what you already do, I bet in reality it is quite a lot :)

Chill out and wait for her to show an interest and ask YOU questions. I thought my DS was doing pretty well until I read this. But then we're more relaxed about early schooling north of the border - thankfully.

Thanks both of you I think its just because we do soooo much reading that she is ridiculously ahead in that but I keep thinking that we should work on things she isn't so good at and step back with reading a bit. She doesn't mind reading btw and we don't ask her to do more than 10 mins but she wants to carry on.

My suggestion is you don't need to work on anything. Just follow her interests and the rest will come. The crucial thing is not to turn her off by appearing to push. If she's anything like my DS she will run twice as fast in the opposite direction!

Back to the reading then

You could get colourful little books with stickers and puzzles in the large bookshops (eg WH Smith, Waterstones, etc - even M&S!). They'll often say it's at the level of Key Stage 1 or 2 and so on. They'll have simple sums disguised as puzzles - you could get one for her as a treat (make sure it has colouring and stickers) and see how she gets on with it on her own without prompting.

Orchard games have quite a few age appropriate games that have a maths theme but are still fun ( Pop to the Shops and Bus Stop for example).

Thanks, I will try those Can't believe I forgot about those books! I had loads for pre-school age

Hi AnxiosElephant:

A really great idea is to try counting games - snakes and ladders is perfect. Play it forwards for addition and backwards for subtraction.

Dice games are also good. Use 2 dice (so addition up to 12) and have your DD add the two dice. Use fingers or you can use buttons, candies, etc.. We like to play it with raisins or skittles and eat them when we are correct. Add more dice for bigger numbers when ready. Can be altered for subtraction as well - same idea - just subtract smaller from larger number or use 3 dice and subtract single die from two dice total.

If you'd like to see how your child is doing against the national curriculum standards - you might consider buying workbooks. These are great to have to hand when waiting at the doctors/ dentist/ etc... or for in the car. Most book shops/ good newsagents carry a range of these. Some are by key stage - which is a bit unfair as your DD has only started KS1. So may be better to target books by school year (Y1) or age (5 - 6). However my feeling is to hold off on this just now, until Y1 is nearly complete.

I should add that this is 'early days' for maths. Y1 is just starting so you should be looking at getting good strength adding numbers up to at least 10 - aiming for adding up numbers to 20-30 by end of year. And you might be thinking about the same with subtraction, depending on how well the addition is going.

I have found keeping it visual (but avoiding coins because they have numbers on them) does help. So use buttons, cookies, etc... to help your child visualise the numbers they are adding and subtracting.

If you feel you need more structured support - we found Mathsfactor (subscription) incredibly useful as well as KS1 bitesize maths excercises (which are free). We also like tux of math command - open source free software you can download [http://tux4kids.alioth.debian.org/tuxmath/] - (Use PLAY ALONE/ SPACE ACADEMY - and just select the type of sums you'd like to work on - the list is long so use the arrow keys at bottom right to scroll through). It's like space invaders - and is great fun.

Games. Orchard Toys games are fab - Pop to the shops (money), their short Snakes and ladders, Bus Stop (adding and subtracting small numbers) are the main ones we had but many of the others are good for basic strategy and reasoning, particularly if you do lots of chat around them.

Games like Blokus are good for visualising shapes. Traffic Jam (I think) and Hopping Frogs by ThinkFun are good strategy games.

All those traditonal board games - snakes and ladders, Cluedo, Monopoly etc - also contain a surprising amount of maths.

There are also lots and lots of online maths games around. Crickweb and Woodlands Junior are good places to start searching.

mathswhizz.com

Counting songs (some add, some subtract, some are twos etc. etc.), also use every day situations:

• cooking (helping you to measure, mix, when baking looking at different size trays
• counting coins (most kids love REAL coins)
• counting for how many people she lays the table, so how many knives, how many forks, how many in total

-when shopping, putting things in trolley, bag, how many items in each bag, how many in total, also look at shapes

• Go for a walk, count things you see, also look at shapes, you can talk about difference between 2D and 3D if she already knows all 2D shapes
• Play card games
• play board games (snakes and ladders is good for counting)

-you can explain an abacus and let her play with an abacus

• share food/tea cups between her dolls

Hi all thats great thanks, will give your ideas a whirl .

any dice games with 2 dice for addition

raisin maths, adding raisins in ones or 2s or more. then taking away by eating them. start "sharing" into 2 or 3 groups according to the number of people,
give out 2 or 3 things to each person (groups of) and count how many altogether.(no need to go further for a while. )

containers in the bath. language: full/empty/half full/overflowing/more/less/litre

telling the time to o'clock then half past (you can do that incidentally)

loads of maths going shopping(5 apples in this bag and five in that, how many altogether?)

number bonds of 10 with grapes/raisins/chocolate buttons.