How do we develop maths at PNSF?

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Children need to develop a positive attitude to maths and not be afraid to make a mistake. Children need your help to explore, experiment and discover. Repeating maths activities will develop their understanding of mathematical concepts. Children will begin to understand regular daily routines, like snack time and going-home time, and how to use numbers to describe things.

Encourage children to use numbers ‘in context’, using numbers in practice, not just in theory. This deepens their understanding. Children can then apply their knowledge and experiment. They can test their new understanding of maths by using numbers in context through the day in real-life situations. Research shows toddlers engage spontaneously with maths during nearly half the time available for free play.

Children will develop their own working theories by using numbers in everyday contexts. They will learn to communicate these to others and over time remember mathematical concepts.

Maths is used for counting and quantities, but children need to develop the other ways numbers are used. For example, for measurements, putting things in order and understanding values.

Look for meaningful maths opportunities to aid learning and progress over time. You should try to find the maths content in all the other areas of learning, if possible.

Patterns and Connections

Research shows that children’s ability to see patterns forms the basis of early mathematical thinking. When you teach children to become aware of patterns, they will build up the skill of spotting patterns for themselves, they will see how patterns change and notice irregularities. Pattern awareness can vary significantly between children. Early patterning begins with matching one-to-one with objects, pictures or numbers.

From birth to 3 years old you should provide patterned material and small objects to arrange in patterns. For 3 and 4 year olds you should be introducing more pattern recognition. Talk to children about, and identify the patterns around them, so they can learn the words that describe different patterns.

As children become more confident in making patterns and seeing connections, they will be able talk out loud about what they have noticed. Children will start to identify the mathematical relationships and connections around them in the home, your setting and outside in nature. Patterning supports the foundations for recall of the counting sequence and understanding number operations.

Spatial Reasoning

Spatial reasoning is the understanding of how objects can move in a 3-dimensional world.

Babies use these skills to recognise body parts, and the location of objects and people around them. Young children learn and understand spatial concepts through play, like with shape-sorters.

Understanding the physical properties of objects allows children to picture shapes in their minds and think about how they could be manipulated. This is an important building block of mathematical thinking. It lies behind problem solving and later maths skills, including geometry. Children are curious and engage naturally in mathematical play.

Children are practising spatial understanding as they use toys like open-ended building blocks or crawl around in dens. It’s important to teach them spatial words to describe what they are seeing. Spatial reasoning is developed through physical development and has strong links to communicaiton and language from birth.

Children use these skills to understand the physical world around them. Understanding spatial relationships allows children to move and navigate in their world. Activities like climbing and squeezing themselves into different types of space develops this further.

Children will start to recognise and remember how objects have characteristics such as shape, size, volume and weight. Then they can start thinking about the way objects interact and how they can move them and play with them in the 3-dimensional world.

Problem solving is at the heart of mathematics and children should be encouraged use their creativity and to explore, play and push boundaries. You should be looking for mathematical opportunities during daily activities.