Count the ways we love to learn at Footsteps

As part of preparing our children for the more formal learning of Primary School, we aim to equip them with the skills to take forward with them.  Numeracy is of course high on our agenda. But it is our aim to incorporate all the learning objectives which meet the early curriculum requirements in a way which make them accessible to every child, as well as, filled with passion, fun, laughter and applied to a wide range of other important fine motor, gross motor and social skills.

So, what mad maths have we been up to so far this January?

We love to work with natural resources to allow children to not only explore numbers but the world around them too.  Our Forest school sessions provide plenty of opportunity to practice our numeracy skills. We loved counting different natural resources and grouping them in the right category and to talk about sizes and weights.

We do lots of cooking and making at all of our Footsteps sites.  From biscuits to pizza and even making our own slime.  We have been practising weighing and measuring as well as counting how many spoonfuls of ingredients we need. We like to use a range of resources, games, puzzles and building materials, as well as online activities for developing important ICT skills. Although most children are more used to technology than the team these days!

We have seen number hunts and working together to put them in order, testing of their ability to be critical thinkers with a game of how many children can we fit in an igloo, comparing sizes of Amazon boxes left over from Christmas and counting treasure on pirate day after finding it with treasure maps and crafted binoculars.

Our favourite activity so far though is definitely counting how many puddles we can splash in!

It’s activities like this that help children think that maths is truly marvellous.