How parents can help with maths learning at home

 

In addition to supporting your child with their weekly maths homework task provided by their teacher, there are lots of other activities that you can do to enhance their mathematical learning everyday.

Here are just a few ideas– remember they will be age and ability dependent so choose and adapt accordingly to suit your child’s needs.

 

When you are making dinner 

•    Get them to count objects in cupboards/ ingredients needed for dinner
•    Get to measure out ingredients for dinner
•    Get them to time how long dinner will take to cook                         
•    Get them fractionally proportion out dinner for others

 

When you are doing the shopping 

•    Get them to add up when doing the shopping
•    Get then to weigh produce when they are shopping                             
•    Get them to time how long it takes to do the shopping
•    Get them to state which brand is cheapest/ most expensive/ the better price deal

 

When you are doing the cleaning/ tidying up

•    Get them to add up how many items they clear away
•    Get them to time how long you spend cleaning per day / week/ month
•    Get them to measure how much water is needed to do a sink full of washing up
•    Get them to  measure the surface area of the shelving that they wipe/polish

 

When you are walking to and from school

•    Get them to count the number of street signs/ lamp posts/ parked cars they see
•    Get them to count the number of steps walked
•    Get them to calculate the walked distance to school if each step is approx 0.5 m
•    Get them to add up all the odd numbered houses along a road

 

 

TOP TIP

There are hundreds of other maths activities you can slot into your daily life at home. Times tables practice and quick fire addition, subtraction and division questions can be done anywhere and can take as little or as much time as you like and best of all …you don’t need anything around you to be able to do them!

 

 

Homework is provided on a weekly basis for all children in each phase of the school. This work is designed to consolidate work that pupils have been doing in class that particular week (unless stated other wise).

If children are uncertain on how to complete their homework, parents are allowed to help them and when this happens parents should write a little note on the work to the class teacher to say that their child needed help.

If parents are unsure of how best to help their child, they could consider reading the school calculations policy (see link on these pages) to see how their child should be recording their work on paper or they could go in and speak with  their child’s class teacher who will be only too happy to talk with them about their class maths work.

 

 

TOP TIP
Don’t let maths homework become a chore – make it a special time in which your child receives some 1:1 talk and support time with an adult. Try to keep it fun!

 

 

 

Within Mathematics learning in school we encourage the children to use and apply their knowledge of the number system, measures, shape and the 4 operations. We provide pupils with a termly maths investigation in which they must solve a puzzle or a problem. Children are required to either record in a systematic way on paper how they solved the problem or they are encouraged to verbally explain their reasoning for approaching the problem as they chose to do.

 

The links below will lead you to a series of maths investigations for you to try and solve with your child at home.