Use these three free maths worksheets to encourage counting. As well as counting the number coloured you can ask other questions eg How many are not coloured? How many are coloured green? etc. Your child can also draw their own animals and colour them in different ways. Other questions you can ask are: How many legs are there? How many eyes? Can you draw three spots on each fish? etc. Remember to keep to very low numbers, just up to 5 to begin with.
There are many children’s books and colouring books on the market which are ideal for this kind of essential language development. I can not stress enough the importance of children hearing correct mathematical language being used in context, before they are expected to use it themselves; so keep on talking to them! Don’t forget to have a go at our great counting games.
Reception maths resources: Colour the lollies
In order for children to be really confident with handling numbers it is very important that they continue to have a great deal of practice in counting forwards and backwards in ones, tens and hundreds. This might appear quite simple for year 4 children, but they can still be unsure of what happens as they cross the hundreds or thousands boundaries.