Maths champions – understanding that maths is all around us
Even though the nursery children are still settling in to their sessions at nursery and spending their time getting to know one another and the nursery staff, they are already developing their maths knowledge and skills. Maths is all around us and we try and incorporate maths in lots of our daily routines and activities within the nursery day. From celebrating birthdays and talking about our ages, to matching the bikes and scooters to their correct parking spot, maths is always included in our days at nursery.
While we have a dedicated maths area within the nursery provision, we also add number, space and pattern learning for example, to all areas of provision. This is particularly evident in the play dough, for example when adding the correct number of bun cases to the bun tray or adding ‘gem cherries’ to the top of currant buns. The children often make up their own maths challenges and activities too, for example counting the amount of connecting cubes they used in their towers or working out how to make a circle with the train track pieces.
Tidy up time is particularly rich in maths learning opportunities. We have several resources for the children to use that are labelled with a number to represent how many of that resource there are, for example ‘4 plates’. Therefore, asking the children to check that there are four plates when tidying up, supports their understanding of four, how many are missing and so on. Matching resources to their picture on the shelf also helps children with the mathematical skills, for example in the block area, when rotating some of the blocks to their shadow outline can be tricky!
