Thank you for attending the Early Years Maths workshop last week.
Here are the key points from the workshop:
- It’s important to be positive about maths
- Don’t tell your child you’re not good at maths
- Everyone can be good at maths
- Being numerate is arguably more important than being literate
- Your support and encouragement is vital to your child’s success
- Everyone can learn maths to the highest level
- Mistakes are valuable
- Questions are really useful
- Maths is about creativity and making sense
- Maths is about connections and communicating
- Maths is about learning, not performing
- Depth is more important than speed
There are 4 key aspects to counting:
- Number names: There are many words to learn, they need to be in the right order and you need to be able to say them in sequence forwards and backwards.
- One number for each item: Children need to be able to match one number name to each item in turn, making sure they don’t miss any out or count any twice.
- Cardinality: Children need to know that the last number in the count gives you the answer to the question, ‘How many are there?’
- Conservation: Children need to learn that the number of items in a group remains the same even if we rearrange them or count them in a different order.
Support your child at home:
- Lots of counting as part of everyday life- both rhymes and counting objects
- Sorting objects and making patterns
- Spotting numbers and using the language of number
- Playing with construction toys (girls and boys)
- Playing simple board games
- Baking
- Solve problems; work out how many altogether, how many more…
- Watch Numberblocks on CBeebies
- Have fun!