Early Years Fun: September 2013

Thursday, 12 September 2013

A favourite Maths website... so useful!

Do you use the NZ Maths website? If not, I would definitely recommend checking it out!

Although its designed for NZ teachers, anyone can access it and it has a ton of amazing ideas and resources for teaching maths.

At the moment, I'm working with a lot of teachers at my school on problem solving, so I've been heading to the problem solving section a lot. There you can find a range of lesson plans around problem solving, sorted by level and strand... soooo handy!

I also LOVE the collection of picture books with mathematical content.... a really comprehensive list of books across the year levels that you can use to support kids maths understanding.

If you haven't had a chance yet, pop on over to www.nzmaths.co.nz when you get a chance.... it's one of those great websites that has awesome resources that you could just pick up and run with... and it's free!

Friday, 6 September 2013

Doubles game for Friday Game Day

We've had a huge couple of weeks at work... lots of prep for our open night which was on Thursday - it was a great night!

I organised a Numeracy display and shared some of the whole school focus that we've had in Maths... Problem Solving and Mental Computation skills. For Friday Game Day I thought today I'd share a quick little game that I had set up to practice doubles...

I normally play this game in pairs, but you could do it individually or in threes. Each player needs to write the numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 on a piece of paper (or up to 20 if you're using 1-10 die) and each group will need a die (I start with a six-sided die and then move to a 1-10 die when kids are getting the hang it). I usually have a couple of ten frames and some counters available for kids to use to help them work out their doubles.

Player 1 rolls the die and then works out double that number. They then cross that double off of their list. The next player then has a turn and the game continues until one person has all of their doubles crossed off - they're the winner!