EYFS and Year 1 Maths Parent Workshop

Today we welcomed parents from Reception and Year 1 to come and learn about how to support the children in developing number sense and fluency.

Here are some of the key messages from the workshop:

•   Working with larger numbers does not necessarily make your child a better     mathematician. Focus on your child being fluent with numbers to 10.

•   Being able to count is not the same as understanding the true value of a number.

•   Playing, talking and experiencing number is much more important than pen and paper work. Play games and ask questions such as: ‘Why is this?’; ‘How do you know?’; ‘Could you do this in another way?’.

•   Try to avoid counting whenever possible. Ask children to group objects to help them to work out the total, for example a child may not be able to recognise six objects but if grouped in two groups of three this may help.

•   Use egg boxes for ten frames, milk bottle tops, dominoes and dice to help children recognise numbers from pictures.

We played a variety of games using dominoes, dice, tens frames and dot cards. Here are some links to some of the games which you may wish to try at home.

Dominoes: https://nrich.maths.org/1200

·     Roll and race: http://thisreadingmama.com/free-roll-race-number-sense-games/

·     Dice games: http://nrich.maths.org/public/leg.php?code=5051

·    Tens frame games: https://nrich.maths.org/10742

If you would like to find out more about developing early number sense then this is a great article which also explains how dot cards can be used: https://nrich.maths.org/2477

A big thank you to parents who were able to attend and for showing so much enthusiasm. Please do come and see me if you would like further information.

Mrs James