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Mathematics in the Early Years consists of taught group lessons, one on one support, and observations of children’s self-directed play. It is important that our students understand that maths is all around us and establish robust connections between numbers and quantities. Our EYFS students have enjoyed different Maths activities this month, here are some highlights from each class.
In Nursery , students have been making strong mathematical connections by using themselves, their bodies and their families. The students were instructed to trace hands of family members as homework. At school each child sat with Ms. Paetzold and talked about; how many hands they have, who they belonged to and how big or small they are. Afterwards students arranged the hands from biggest to smallest and taped them to a paper. Using family photos children used manipulatives to represent each person in their family picture. This activity allowed children to use language to talk about their family, count and demonstrate one to one correspondence. Children also explored measurements by looking at how tall everyone is and recording their height on the class height chart. When we focused on counting children made handprints and counted their fingers as far as they could.
In Reception A, students enjoyed “pumpkin maths” to coincide with Autumn topic. Pumpkins offer a lot of opportunity towards maths investigation. The students explored a range of math’s topics including size ordering, weighing, counting, measuring and estimation. Students learnt the comparatives and superlatives: big, bigger biggest, small, smaller, smallest. They selected different size pumpkins from our “pumpkin garden” and arranged them from the biggest to smallest. They also explored weight and estimation by using a scale to find out who had the heaviest pumpkin in our class. Thereafter, they estimated how many seeds were in each pumpkin. Students wrote down what number they estimated on their worksheet and afterwards, we cut the pumpkins open and counted how many seeds were in each pumpkin. We also used pumpkins for counting and matching numbers to quantities.
In Reception B, November has been an exciting time for Maths development. We continued to learn how to count in French. While we spend most of our time on numbers to 10, we have started to expand our counting in English to 20. We are counting everything! With a focus on shapes and spatial awareness we have been drawing and making shapes inside and out, making shapes with our bodies, and using outside and indoor materials to make shapes. We are learning new shapes and how to describe them so we can play, compare and manipulate them. Coinciding with our introduction to winter animals, we have been drawing animal shapes while following multi-step directions. We have also been examining patterns – making patterns inside and out and challenging ourselves to look beyond coloured patterns. As we continue discussions about changing seasons and weather, we have been looking at temperature and how is relates to numbers and our adaptation to colder weather.