Supporting Numeracy at Home
Supporting Numeracy at Home
Parents play a really important part in supporting numeracy skills at home. Numeracy is about being able to understand and use numbers in a range of situations, for example when solving problems or making decisions in situations involving numbers. Learning doesn’t always happen in the classroom; it can happen anywhere. With your support, we are keen to develop your child’s ‘number sense’. How this could work is listed below:
- Understanding money – discuss shopping budgets, adding and subtracting, working out change, how we work out savings, get them calculating the cost of a takeaway for the family, research the best deal when buying something like a mobile phone or use a comparison website, discuss how you split the bill when you eat out
- Working with time – reading bus or train timetables, estimating the time it will take to get somewhere, how long does a tv programme last, reinforcing the use of an analogue clock rather than a digital one (this allows children to estimate time much more easily), work out how much fuel you have left for a journey, discuss time differences when travelling abroad, discuss how you plan to get to work on time.
- Cooking skills – this covers a wide range of numeracy skills – measuring, working out the quantity if you double the ingredients, the time it takes to cook a particular item, set the timer when cooking.
- Putting things in order (sequencing) – reinforce the months of the year (often children can get most of them but will skip one or two months) by discussing birthdays, key events and so on.
- Working with information – discuss the performance of their sports team and the chances of them winning; look at graphs in magazine or newspapers and how we interpret information.
- Estimating – get them to estimate the cost of a weekly shop, the monthly bills for the house and then see how close they are to the exact amount, estimate how much money they need to visit the local shops and whether they have enough. If you use a calculator, discuss how you know if you have obtained the right answer or pressed the wrong button.
I would recommend that you take a look at the following websites:
https://www.familymathstoolkit.org.uk/advice-for-families – a website giving a wide range of useful tips for supporting Maths at home.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/skillswise/maths/zfdymfr – if you want to brush up on ‘how to…do percentages’ etc. this is a useful website
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zqhs34j – BBC Bitesize Maths topics
https://www.weareteachers.com/math-card-games/ – a website of 16 card games, with pictures that help with numeracy skills
Games and Other Activities
- Card games are an excellent way to develop numeracy skills. They encourage listening to and remembering rules or instructions, sequencing and very often, some kind of numeracy skill. Try this website for card games and rules: https://www.classicgamesandpuzzles.com/Card-Games.html
- Twenty one – good for memory, adding, probability.
- Rummy – good for memory, sequencing, collecting and seeing patterns
- Solitaire/patience – good for sequencing
- Newmarket – good for sequencing
- Higher or Lower – guess if the next card is higher or lower – good for probability
- Picking up pairs – good for memory
Other Activities:
Shut the box game – students have played this in class and it is a quick and easy way to support number bonds. The game is available here:
Blokus – a game that encourages looking for patterns, reasoning and spatial awareness. Available here:
Monopoly deal – a much faster and easier card game version of Monopoly – available from Amazon
Happy Puzzle Company has a wide range of numeracy games worth considering. https://www.happypuzzle.co.uk/