Maths is Everywhere
We use maths every day without even thinking about it: every time we shop; whenever we think about the time; when we set a table for the family; when we cook or bake…. The list is endless. Maths is part of everyday life.
With this in mind, the easiest thing you can do to support your child’s mathematical development is look for opportunities to highlight the maths of every day.
With younger children, this could include:
counting or sorting things (anything!);
naming shapes;
talking about days of the week and time;
counting simple amounts of money; or comparing lengths, weights and capacity (how much a container can hold) of objects;
doing a simple survey, e.g. favourite animal, of everyone in the family, and showing the results on a picture chart.
With older children, get them busy with more serious challenges:
real-world problems involving adding/subtracting/dividing/multiplying money;
measuring and comparing time and distance of walks, cycles or drives (use Google Maps to get exact distances);
measuring exact dimensions and area of every room in the home, or measuring and comparing the height of different family members;
following exact recipes for baking or cooking using grammes and millilitres;
discussions of time during the day, e.g. “How many minutes until 8 p.m?”);
making a graph or chart of the daily weather and temperature, or their own screen time/activity time;
doing a survey of the members of the household and representing the data in a graph.
Online Maths Resources
100 Square with Ms. Gibbons
3-D Shapes with Ms. Gibbons
2-D Shapes with Ms. Gibbons
Skip Counting with Ms. Gibbons
Multiplication.com
3rd Class up: Plenty of games to practice Multiplication.
Top Marks - Hit the Button
Class Level: 1st-5th
N.B: A paid app version is available from Apple/Google Play/Amazon but the web browser version is free to use.
Hit the Button is an interactive maths game with quick fire questions on number, bonds, times tables, doubling and halving, multiples, division facts and square numbers. Games are against the clock and develop number fact recall.
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button
Top Marks - Daily 10
Class Level: Junior Infants-5th Class
Daily 10 is a primary maths resource which covers addition, subtraction, ordering, partitioning, place value, rounding, multiplication, division, doubles, halves and fractions. The aim is to deliver 10 maths questions, many which can be used for mental maths practice.
Sets of questions can be timed or untimed and the activities are ideal for starter and plenary sessions. They are graded in levels of difficulty which match year group levels in England's National Curriculum Maths requirements. This means the resource is suitable for children from 5 to 11 years of age.
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/daily10
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