"I wasn’t any good at Maths at School..."

^^ Is often one thing you’ll hear parents say.

They aren’t trying to put their children off, but the opposite and they don’t want their fear of numbers as a child to be replicated in their own children.

Luckily for all the parents, their children have YOU!…. Ta Dah! And this is where we come in to give you a little helping hand! With your fairy dust and magic wand you can sprinkle lots of excitement all over mathematics for every child you teach.

Before you ask us … ‘so exactly how are we going to do this?’ Don’t worry we’ve done our homework and we’ve 5 very sparkly shiny teaching tips to help you!

Make it fun

Ok so this is kind of obvious but it’s easy to get caught up in achieving the learning objectives for addition, subtraction etc and forget that the most effective way for children to learn is for them to enjoy it. And very importantly the end result is that they will have a positive association with numbers too! Make a giant dice, draw snakes and ladders in chalk, play bingo, do colouring by number or try a maths monster tray like this one from No Time For Flashcards.

Make it real

There’s no better way to learn than when it’s in the child’s every day life. Whether that’s learning to tell the time or just counting the numbers on a clock, there’s a billion things in a child’s day that presents a wonderful opportunity to learn maths. Other examples are counting the stairs at school, working out the right money to buy food in the toy shop or knowing their number in line!

Move your body

Yeah! Children love using their bodies to run, skip, hop, dance and….. just move! We love this maths dancing game from Carrots Are Orange.

Make it messy

Use play dough, water, sand, glupe, corn starch and cooking activities to get sticky fingers and faces! Weighing ingredients and measuring to bake something delicious is a brilliant example of ‘hidden maths’ and children can sort playdough shapes into categories or size. An ingenious recipe we think your class would really enjoy is Domino Cookies!

Use technology

Today’s little ones are naturals on ipads whether we like it or not! Well let’s take advantage of this and mix their love of screens with learning maths! We’ve scoured the net for the best online games and Top Marks comes up trumps!