This term in reception classes, maths lessons have been largely focused on the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Teach Your Monster Number Skills also starts off focusing on these first few numbers, both because it matches what your children are learning and because we know helping kids build a solid foundation in numbers leads to a greater chance of maths success later in life. So just what have they been up to and how can we help our kids at home? 

Early number learning is based on the ability to count, use different representations of numbers and subitise — the ability to instantly recognise a number without having to count. For example, Number Skills uses fingers and dice to represent the same numbers to build up that instant recognition of a value.

You can use lots of home items for this such as small toys, buttons or coins. One easy idea we liked was to use different coloured dried beans and allow them time to sort the beans into different colour groups based on their quantity. Let them tell you what they did. Rather than overwhelming them with higher numbers, start with a small amount of beans and then you can ask deeper understanding questions like: 

How many can you see? 

How do you know? 

How many are there in each group? 

What can you show me? 

What can you see?

How many ways can you show me this number? 

Why did you organise them in this way? 

This will help them build stronger connections between the physical and visual representations and their knowledge of numbers. 

Another way to help them with early number recognition is to do a number hunt! Where can they find 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 in your house? Do they count to find how many? Encourage children to create their own collections of things and observe how they do it, can you ask them any of the above questions to help them develop their mathematical thinking?

To help your kid further with number recognition, we’ve created a spooky Number Skills Halloween game. All you’ll need is a dice and some coloured pencils. Simply print the second page, roll the dice and colour the matching number of creepy creatures!

Finally, as we mentioned in our article ‘Maths and Music’ from last October, sound and rhyme are also very important in maths learning. For example, one simple activity you could try is to clap a number of times and see if your child can match a number of objects to the claps they heard. 

There are also plenty of early number songs out there, here’s a few suggestions from us:

• Hickory Dickory Dock
• Three blind mice (particularly good if you’re feeling spooky this Halloween!) 
• Three Little Speckled Frogs 
• And our very own Number Songs found here.

Hopefully, that’s given you a few ideas on how to continue learning at home in fun ways, and you can always play our game Number Skills, which helps you in game form!

Leo Allen
Number Skills Product Manager