Home Learning
Your child will receive weekly activities to complete at home (it will be nothing new that he /she has not learnt in class).
Children could always do with practising time and how to use money so please use every opportunity!
If you would like to do some practical, fun Maths with your child at home, here are some ideas:
Car Journeys
When on long car journeys, choose the colour of a car. Each time you see a car of your colour, look at the number plate. The person who has seen the largest/smallest number on a number plate is the winner. (The success of this game often hangs on the ability of the driver and navigator keeping their cool when a wrong turn is taken!
Counting Ideas
Counting forms an important part of the calculation children have to do every day. With good counting skills, children can add, subtract, multiply and divide.
Counting on or back in 1s, 10s and 100s from any number
Counting in regular steps (e.g. 2, 4, 6 etc)
Going Up and Down Your Stairs
Pick a number for the bottom step. Then count in tens or hundreds going up. Counting in hundreds can be done in grams and millimetres as well. Pick a bigger number for the top step and count backwards as you go down the stairs. (For some, this can be done using decimals or even move into negative numbers).
Counting in regular steps going up or down stairs can help with times tables.
What number will we be on when we reach the 6th step?
What number is at the top/bottom step?
How many steps to reach 28 if we count in 4s?
If we count in 200g steps, when will we reach 1kg?
(If you live in a bungalow, you could count the paving slabs on the path)!
Partitioning
Partitioning means breaking up a number and knowing what each number stands for.
24 = 20 + 4
132 = 100 + 30 + 2
Disco Numbers
Hundreds = Touch your head
Tens = Touch your shoulders
Ones/units = Clap your hands/stamp your feet
So, for 326… Touch your head 3 times, touch your shoulders twice and clap/stamp 6 times.
Ideas to try:
Show me a number. I’ll show you 10 more/less.
What action shall we do for thousands/tenths?
Show me how old you are (if you dare)!
Sport in the Newspaper or On the Telly
Reading Numbers
By the end of primary school, children need to be able to read and write whole numbers going into millions. They also have to round numbers to the nearest 10, 100 or decimal place. Children also have to be able to read and interpret tables and charts. Newspaper and BBC Sport web pages are a good source of tables and charts. There is also plenty of sport on the telly.
How many people watched Forest play Leicester?
Where was the biggest crowd in League 1?
How many goals were scored in the premiership altogether/before half time/in the second half?
Wales beat England at rugby 42 – 17(honest). How many tries do you think were scored?
For cricket fans, how many runs did the top 3 run scorers score? How much did the rest score?
In darts, a player has 116 left. How will he score this to win with 3 darts?
Snooker has a whole set of possibilities. After a break of 50, guess how many balls were potted? What is the most or least it could have been?
In athletics/motor racing/skiing you have to read time to the decimal places. Good for ordering numbers!
At the Olympics or at the athletics, how much higher and further did someone throw/jump than their nearest rival?
Playing Cards
There are many ways to use playing cards to help children to use their maths skills.
Ordinary Playing Cards
Take out the picture cards. Play snap but you only have a snap if the total of the cards is 10. For older children, the number on the cards stands for how many tens there are in the number. Play snap but you only have a snap if the total of the cards is 100.
You can also play a points game. When 2 cards of the same suit are put down, multiply/add the cards together (depending on their age). If you are correct, you score the number of points in the answer you gave. Choose a target e.g. 100 points. The first past the total is the winner. (This also involves addition and subtraction. How many more do we need to win? Which cards do you think would help?)
Top Trumps
These are great games on their own and can support reading from a chart. They usually have a range of large and small numbers and a range of areas of interest.
Which superhero is the tallest/strongest etc?
Which car/bike/plane in the fastest/costs the most?
Who is the oldest?
Which do you think is the best card?
Cooking
Cooking gives children practical experience of measuring and reading from scales.
Using Recipes
Recipes often suggest how many people you can feed or how many items you can make.
If the recipe is for 8 people, can you make it for 4?
If the recipe is for 8 biscuits, have we got enough ingredients to make 16?
Will there be any biscuits/cakes left for you to give to your teacher?
Setting the TV recorder/Using TV Listings
How long is your programme?
This film is 128 minutes long. When will it finish? Will it be after your bedtime?
How many episodes of your favourite programme can you record onto a 3 hour DVD?
Singing
Many nursery songs help children to count backwards and forward. The web-link takes you to the BBC site and has animations, words and music to sing along to.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schoolradio/subjects/earlylearning/nurserysongs
Out Shopping
Shopping gives children a great chance to use their Maths skills.
Any opportunity to find value for money gives children experience of money and solving problems. When out and about, getting children to handle money and pay at the counter helps children to count in different ways and make totals in a variety of ways.
Shopping gives children the opportunity to spot and name shapes, especially 3-D shapes (e.g. cubes, cylinders, cuboids, spheres, prisms, cones, pyramids etc.).
Things you Might Ask
₤ How much will we save if we buy 3 for 2?
₤ Is it better to buy 2 individual apples or a bag?
₤ How much do 2 of these cost?
₤ How special is a special offer? Do we save much?
₤ For small shopping lists, how much have we spent so far? How much change from £5/£10?
₤ How many weeks will it take to save your pocket money if you want to buy that?
₤ Can you find me a cylinder/cuboid?
₤ How many 10p coins do you need to pay for that?
Other Good Games to Play
Uno – good game for recognising and matching numbers
Dominoes – supports counting and associating patterns with numbers
Snakes and Ladders – counting numbers up to 100/
Scrabble – adding, multiplying (doubling, trebling) and good for vocabulary development and spelling.
Monopoly – good for handling money, paying using notes, giving change.
Yahtzee – a good game for adding, multiplying and probability.
Times-tables
5 ways to help learning times-tables
- 2, 4 and 8 times tables: doubling
- 10 times table: place value
- 5 times table: skip counting in 5s and halving the 10 times table
- 3 times table: skip counting
- 6 times table: double the three times table
Play Bingo!
Children jot down eight numbers from 1 to 36 (or 1 - 100 if working with a 1-10 dice). Roll a dice twice to create a multiplication calculation. Players strike out the answer if it is one of their eight numbers. Which are good numbers to choose?
There are also lots of free times-tables apps for the IPAD, for example DK 10 Minutes a Day Times Tables
NRICH website
NRICH offers challenging and engaging activities to help develop mathematical thinking and problem-solving skills. It provides free and interesting mathematical games, problems and articles.
Maths Holiday Challenge Summer 2017 – Go and find Maths in the environment!
On the bus, in a shop, in your house, in nature…?
Bring in a photo or draw a picture of Maths you’ve seen in the environment
Extension: Write 1 / 2 sentences to go with your photo or drawing