Maths Through Play

Play is the natural way in which children learn. It is the process through which children explore, investigate, recreate and come to understand their world. Play is an activity in which everything that a child knows and can do is practised and new learning opportunties are best absorbed.

Shape sorters help children to recognise shapes at an early age.

To many adults, the words Maths and Play have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Maths is thought of as times tables and recording figures but in early years learning Maths can be found in games and childrens everyday enviroment. Through opening up opportunties for children to learn maths in the home setting they will begin to:

• know and understand early maths language of measurement, shapes, spaces, positions, early

numbers, order and patterns

• know the sequence of numbers

• begin to understand positional words, e.g. in, on, outside

• show an awareness of time

• be aware of shapes in their environment

• be aware of 1-to-1 correspondence

• acquire new vocabulary

• learn number rhymes and songs, e.g. one, two, buckle my shoe etc.

• be aware of conservation

Shapes collage

So what can you do at home? Well how about one of the following ideas:

Bath Time- instead of the usual sqeezy bath toys one evening swap them over with some pots and containers of different sizes and encourage them to measure the water from one jar into another. Discuss how full the container is and how many small pots of water more you will need to fill it up. Cutting up shapes in foam can make a great creative activity too as they should stick to the tiles in the bathroom.

Baking- This can be you of the easiest way to discuss maths through play. weighing out the ingredience and counting using scales will help children to recognise numbers and even count on further. Baking a cake or pizza can also open up chances to talk about shapes and simple fractions.

Laying the table- Getting your little ones to help lay the table is a great chance to talking about pairs of cutlery, counting how many cups or plates you need and adding on how many extra ou may need.

Planting- Now that the weather is getting nicer planting daffodils and sunflowers can be a fun way of counting seeds for how much soil you need and measuring using a tape measure.

Daily routine- Displaying a visual routine can help your children to begin to recognise and begin to understand the concept of time, as they get older you can introduce more use of a clock.

This is just a taster there are many more great activities you can do at home. I have blogged some on Monkeying Around here and Cathy from The Nurture Store has a great section dedicated to Maths here.