Support for parents:

 MATHS VIDEOS FOR PARENTS

The White Rose Maths Hub that you may be familiar with from home learning have produced some fantastic, short and very clear videos explaining about how place value, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions and algebra are now taught in school. The videos also have free, downloadable easy to follow, step by step guides with copies of resources that we use in school. Please check them out!

 https://whiterosemaths.com/for-parents/maths-with-michael/

This free online glossary from Oxford Owl may help to clearly explain any Mathematical language that you may come across:

 https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/at-school/education-glossary/maths-education-glossary-a-l/

Th National Numeracy website is full of information for parents with free, downloadable tasks (from Reception to Year 6) for you to try at home with your child. 

https://www.familymathstoolkit.org.uk/

How can I support my child at home with Maths without having the same equipment that they use in school?

Research shows that children learn more when they can visualise numbers and use physical resources to help their understanding. In Northside, physical resources are openly available to all age groups of children to use in their Maths lessons. The Maths resources we have in school can be recreated by using these simple, household objects.  

Here are 5 everyday household objects that can be turned into Maths resources!

1. Lego! 

If you have Lego/Duplo/Megablocks at home, these can be used instead of counting cubes. Lego is also fantastic for helping children to visualise fractions and even helps you with adding and subtracting fractions.

2. Spaghetti and pasta!

In school, we use Dienes which are small plastic pieces which represent numbers. Dienes can be used to represent thousands, hundreds, tens and ones. Food always attracts children’s attention! Why not try using lasagne sheets to represent 100s, spaghetti to represent tens and pasta shells to represent ones.

3. Homemade beadstrings

Beadstrings are great for helping you to count in 2s, 5s, 10s and in fact, any group size, representing 2 digit numbers, adding and subtracting. Beadstrings work well when you use 2 different colours of beads. For every 10 beads, change to the other colour. If you don’t have beads at home, you could try painting different colours of dried pasta tubes instead.

You can thread them onto elastic or a shoelace. For Nursery and Reception children, try a beadstring of 20 and for a beadstring for Year 1 upwards, try 100 beads.

See the website below for lots of ideas on how to use your beadstrings:

http://theelementarymathmaniac.blogspot.com/2013/09/how-to-make-100-bead-strings.html

4. Place value counters

In school, we use small counters to represent numbers. Bottle tops of different colours (written on with a permanent pen) can be used to represent ones, tens, hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands.

5. Homemade Tens frames

Tens frames are simple grids that allow children to visualise numbers quickly when counters are laid out in an organised way. They are great for allowing children to add and subtract, make teen numbers and recall number bonds to 10 or 20.

Tens frames can be made with cardboard strips, lollipop sticks or even egg boxes with bottle tops, circles of cardboard or buttons as counters.

Free interactive resources:

If your child prefers to use online interactive Maths resources, a great FREE website is https://mathsbot.com/manipulativeMenu

Mathsbot contains interactive coins, Dienes, hundred squares and number frames (that resemble Numicon) and many more.

Free printable resources:

If you have access to a printer at home, you might like to print out a copy of the Numicon shapes for your child to use.

PARENT WORKSHOPS FOR MATHS:

We hold short, informal parents Maths workshops for different year groups/areas of Maths learning throughout the year. Please check the school newsletter for details of upcoming workshops.