Maths Madness!

We have been having fun with Maths this morning, and I’ve been using the Letts Numeracy Teacher’s book for Year Reception (Kindergarden) to keep on track with what exactly Jundee needs to know.

This morning we focused on ‘more or less’. I wanted him to get to grips with the vocab and make the concept of ‘one more’ and ‘one less’ more concrete for him, so that he knows this isn’t airy-fairy, but is used in real-life too. Here’s what we did.

We played ‘shop’. I drew a rather wonky shop on an A4-sized dry-wipe board and lined up some Unifix cubes in front as people in a queue.

To demonstrate ‘one more person’, we brought in a cube who joined to line to get his loaf of bread.

It was quite comical, ‘cos I made a huge drama about it.

“Cube number 7 just remembered that he’s going to get a ticket on his car, so he has to rush off. Now we have one less.” Jundee loved it and toddled cube 7 off!

: ‘I’ve got a plan up my sleeves,’ he thought.

Once I was happy with Jundee grasping the concept, I told him to line up people in two separate queues outside the shop – one queue had to have a number of people more than 6 and one with a number of people less than 10..

…. and he came up with the number 9 – mashaa`Allah!

I’ve got a ‘Montessori wannabe’ resource I made that I use to teach Maymee to recognise her numbers, and so far she’s learnt up to number 4. Let’s see if I can upload some photos. Watch this space!

~ Umm J.