Maths help for parents of children aged 5 to 11

Here is the second in a series of maths worksheets for very young children dealing with counting and matching. It involves drawing lines joining sets with the same number of birds and worms and comes from the fabulous collection of resources from urbrainy.com.

Counting and matching birds p1

Free maths worksheet from urbrainy.com

Thanks to URBrainy.com for this worksheet. They specialise in early years maths and have some great free resources. This is a counting and matching page. Matching equal numbers of things is an important step for young children and one which should be encouraged as often as possible. Worksheets are only one way of doing this; there are plenty of opportunities in the home for matching eg laying the table with knives and forks, spoons with bowls etc.

Counting and matching dogs and kennels p1

Free maths worksheet from mathsblog.co.uk

We are lucky enough to have limited access to some of the URBrainy worksheets for early years. These really are presented very well and are a great set of resources for children just starting off with maths. Here is a simple counting worksheet.

Many more can be found at urbrainy.com

Counting up to 5 gorillas pg 1

Thanks to ‘Youarebrainy’ for this worksheet for very young children. ‘More than’ and ‘less than’ are important concepts for children to understand and they need plenty of practical work at home before moving onto worksheets: eg ask questions during everyday life, such as ‘Have I got more cake than you?’

Again, if using a worksheet with young children make sure that you sit down with them and talk about it - the pictures as well as what needs to be done.

Reception maths worksheet: One more than

Words which describe the position and direction of objects are very important to use with your children. Confidence in using these terms enables children to describe what is happening in the world around them. Many of the movement words are later used in mathematics with such topics as shape, co-ordinates, translations etc.

Reception maths vocabulary: Position, direction and movement

The vocabulary that young children are expected to know is quite challenging and none more so than in Shape and Space. Children are expected to be able to explore shapes, talk about their properties and know some quite tricky names of 2D and 3D shapes, including sphere, pyramid and cone.

This knowledge can only be gained with plenty of experience of handling and playing with shapes - don’t forget, the kitchen is a great place to be if you want to get the names of shapes into the conversation!

Reception maths vocabulary: Shape and space

This is another area of maths that children meet very early in their lives. Standard units of measurement (eg metres or kilos) are not taught at this stage - it would be pointless as many children are unable to count up to 100 or 1000.

Rather it is about comparing things - objects which are taller, wider, heavier, longer etc than other objects.

Get the vocabulary right at this age and they will have little problems with measurement later.

Reception maths vocabulary: measures

This is an area of maths vocabulary that children meet very early in their lives. However children cannot learn the meanings of words in isolation and parents need to question them and use the vocabulary to help with their understanding. Talking during a trip to a supermarket could involve using most of these words:
compare
double (more…)

When we think of teach time many of us think just in terms of telling the time on a clock or watch. However, much work must precede this as is shown by the vocabulary list for reception (4/5 years old) below.
Start with which day of the week it is, what day will it be tomorrow/ yesterday etc. There are certain times of the day they need to know, such as morning and afternoon and the order that these come in.
At this stage do not worry about telling the time on a clock: some children will find this hard and get very frustrated if it is introduced too soon.
Maths vocabulary for Reception: Time

Maths Vocabulary for Reception: Length
Words to do with length are all around us and it is an ideal subject to involve young children with. At this age standard units of measurement are not used, the important concepts are all to do with comparisons as well as understanding that shapes can have length, width and height. This is not a spelling list: more a list of words that children should have heard in a variety of contexts and words that they are beginning to use themselves to describe their world. (more…)