Southborough Church of England Primary School
Southborough Church of England Primary School
Mental Maths Activities
Maths Fluency
Just like in term time, Numbots https://numbots.com/ and Times Tables Rockstars https://ttrockstars.com/ are ideal ways to support your child’s number knowledge and multiplication fluency, so please continue to use these over the Summer Holidays.
Open the PDFs to discover national expectations for your child's year group as well as a range of links to resources and ideas about how to get the most out of learning.
Number Bonds and Early Times Tables for Reception and Key Stage 1
Times Tables and Number Facts for Key Stage 2
Here are some other ways you can involve maths learning in your day to day activities.
Make a meal
Cooking or baking are both great ways to work and develop children's practical maths skills. From going to the shop to buy the ingredients and working out the cost while sticking to a budget, to following the steps in the recipe and measuring out the ingredients correctly, it all involves maths. The recipe doesn't need to be complicated, even making something as simple as crispy cakes would use all these skills and more.
Try to think of questions to ask during the process that helps them engage with the maths elements and shows their thinking and understanding....."Do we have enough money to buy 3 packets of chocolate? How much would that cost?" "The recipe makes 12 crispy cakes. What would we do if we want to make 24 cakes? Or 6 cakes?" Try to tailor your questions to your child's age and stage and if you have children of different ages, get them to help each other. The best bit about this kind of task is they get to tuck in and eat what they have made at the end! What better motivation do you need?
Play a game
Board games are great for children to practise their maths skills, often without realising it. Many board games involve counting, sharing, adding and subtracting which are all important maths skills. Games involving playing cards or dice can be useful for working on these skills. You could even get your child to design and create their own board games. You can find free board game templates to print online.
Plan a day trip
We often take for granted as adults the maths involved in planning a trip or visiting somewhere as a family. However, it can be really valuable for children to be involved as it can help them to work on big maths concepts like time and money. From understanding how to read a timetable and working out how long a journey will take, to calculating the cost of the tickets and refreshments within a set budget, there are so many ways your child can work on their maths skills. If you are going on holiday abroad, working out exchange rates and the cost of things in a foreign country compared to home can be very valuable for older children, and helps them to understand the value of money especially if they have their own money to spend.
Take learning outdoors
It is summer and so hopefully the weather will be nice to get outdoors. If you have younger children you can use outdoor paints or chalk to get them practising number formation. If you are out for a walk encourage them to look for different shapes in nature and name them. Do a scavenger hunt and encourage them to look for a certain number of items - Can you find 5 green leaves or 3 brown sticks? Grouping, sorting, ordering and comparing are important for younger children and help them to start to use and understand the language of maths.