Last Thursday, Mrs Barnett and Mrs Rogers held a wonderful maths workshop for Pre-Prep parents. They spoke not only about the over-arching maths philosophy and pedagogy of how maths is taught in Pre-Prep at Barrow Hills, but also gave important and practical advice about how parents can assist each child with their maths learning journey at home.
I felt it would be very worthwhile to revisit some of this advice:
How you can help your child with maths at home:
Play Board Games: Games like Snakes and Ladders or Ludo help with counting, addition, and strategy. For older children, Monopoly is a great way to practice adding and subtracting larger amounts.
Use Money in Role-Play: Set up a pretend shop with coins to practise addition, subtraction, and understanding change. For older children, take them shopping and get them to add up how much certain items cost, or how much change you should get.
Count in Steps: Practise counting in 2s, 5s, and 10s during walks or while skipping or clapping.
Measure Together: Involve your child in measuring ingredients, objects, or distances using rulers, tape measures, or scales. Baking and cooking together is a great time to do this.
Tell the Time: Use clocks to practise reading the time to the hour, half-hour, and quarter-hour, gradually moving to 5-minute intervals. Ask children how long something takes to happen, or how long until we leave to go somewhere.
Spot Patterns and Sequences in the world around them: Identify patterns in trees, tiles, wallpaper, or nature. Encourage your child to extend or create their own patterns outside or on a piece of paper.
Tackle Word Problems: Create simple real-life scenarios for addition, subtraction, or sharing (e.g., “If we have 12 apples and eat 4, how many are left?”).
Explore Shapes and Fractions: Cut sandwiches or pizzas into halves and quarters, or talk about the properties of shapes while playing with building blocks.
By doing these things, children will develop a sense of numbers that will stand them in good stead on their maths learning journey for years to come.
Parent problem of the week
Looking at the 3 sums below, what is the answer to the 4th one?
- 8 + 2 = 16106
- 5 + 4 = 2091
- 9 + 6 = 54153
- 7 + 3 = ?
Solution to last week’s problem
Last week’s problem had a clever Star Wars theme:
On Endor, OC means a bundle of 8 sticks, OCTA means a bundle of 8 OCs, OCTIL means a bundle of 8 OCTAs, and OCTILLA means a bundle of 8 OCTILs. One day, a band of Ewoks gather OCTILLA sticks.
How many did they gather? The answer is 4096. Since OC=8, OCTA=8×8=64, and OCTIL=8×64=512, Then OCTILLA=8×512=4096
Mr Pretorius, Head of Mathematics