Whether you have children starting school for the first time or returning, what you do at home plays a vital role in supporting your children to develop a positive attitude towards maths.
Many crafty, hands-on making and building activities or those that require creative thinking, investigation and problem-solving help develop skills for all types of learning. People often forget, or don’t realise, that these skills are maths skills as well. Take a look at our 5 key principles of our creative maths approach for more details.
It’s also important to help children discover that maths is everywhere and in everything.
What about:
- Baking a simple cake and measuring out ingredients
- Singing counting songs such as ‘Ten Green Bottles’
- Playing shops – adding up costs and counting money
- Working out how many bricks/blocks – and what sizes – you need to build a house, a castle…
- Storytelling using maths – choosing a number and thinking about its super-power, what it can do..
These are just a few; you can find lots more ideas on our website!
Enjoying maths-related activities and creating positive memories of doing maths together as a family helps build can-do attitudes towards maths. When children feel comfortable with maths, they begin to feel more confident. And so do parents! Again, this is important to remember as research shows that children can pick up on and ‘inherit’ negative attitudes to maths from the adults around them.
Informal learning – at home, through play, as part of other activities – is key to supporting a child’s learning journey. Children spend only 15% of their waking time in school and according to research from Campaign for Learning, at age 7, parents make 6 times as much difference to how their child gets on in their education than school does.
So, play and explore with maths, and remember to have fun doing creative maths activities with your children – this will build confidence, practise skills and support the maths that’s taught in school!
Why not try these activities: