Ideas for Maths at Home
(from Ministry of Education)
Talk together and have fun with numbers and patterns
Help your child to:
- find and connect numbers around your home and neighbourhood – phone numbers, clocks, letterboxes, road signs, signs showing distance
- count forwards and backwards (starting with numbers like 998, 999, 1,000, 1,001, 1,002 then back again)
- make patterns when counting – forwards and backwards, starting with different numbers (73, 83, 93, 103… or 118, 108, 98, 88…)
- explore patterns through drumming, clapping, stamping, dancing find out the ages and birth dates of family and whānau see patterns in the numbers in their times tables.
Here's a tip - being positive about mathematics is really important for your child’s learning – even if you didn’t enjoy it or do well at it yourself at school.
Use easy, everyday activities
Involve your child in:
- making lunch or a meal for a party or a hui – make sandwiches in different shapes. Can they cut their sandwich in half? Can they cut the other sandwich in half a different way?
- helping at the supermarket – choose items to weigh – how many apples/bananas weigh a kilo? Look for the best buy between different makes of the same items (eg blocks of cheese) – check on the amount of sugar or salt per serving
- telling the time – o’clock, ½ , ¼ past
- deciding how much money you will need to put into the parking meter and what time you will need to be back before the meter expires
- thinking about how many telephone numbers they can remember – talk about what they do to help them remember the series of numbers
- reading together – help them look for numbers and mathematics ideas
- looking for shapes and numbers in newspapers, magazines, junk mail, art (like carvings and sculpture).
Here's a tip - mathematics is an important part of everyday life and there are lots of ways you can make it fun for your child.
For wet afternoons/school holidays/weekends
Get together with your child and:
- play card and board games that use guessing and checking
- look at junk mail – which is the best value? Ask your child what they would buy if they had $10/$100/$1,000 to spend
- do complicated jigsaw puzzles
- cook or bake – use measuring cups, spoons (½ and ¼ teaspoon) and scales
- collect boxes – undo and see if you can make them up again or make it into something else
- make paper darts and change the weight so that they fly differently, work out which is the best design
- create a repeating pattern (eg kōwhaiwhai patterns) to fill up a page or decorate a card
- play mathematics "I Spy" – something that is ½ a km away, something that has 5 parts hide something from each other and draw a map or hide several clues – can you follow the map or the clues and find it?
- do skipping ropes/elastics – how long will it take to jump 20 times?
Here's a tip - the way your child is learning to solve mathematics problems may be different to when you were at school. Get them to show you how they do it and support them in their learning.