Maths in our nursery
In our nursery, children are learning Maths all of the time through a wide variety of play experiences and they require time and opportunities to explore, investigate and talk about their developing understanding of mathematical concepts. During nursery sessions, they are given the opportunity to practice and apply these skills.
The physical and emotional environment we create, is fundamental in supporting young children’s mathematical learning. We provide high quality mathematical experiences as part of the continuous provision, creating a culture, where children are willing to ‘have a go’, develop mathematical thinking and the ability to problem solve.
Our environment provides children with opportunities to engage in physical movement and multi- sensory exploration, as well as the opportunity to work with concrete materials and collections of objects, allowing them to experience familiar ideas from home and to see realistic uses of number in their everyday world.
In our nursery, children explore mathematics through play, in purposeful and meaningful ways and we recognise that it is important to respond to the maths that arises through children’s fascinations and individual interests. Observing and working with children’s interests and patterns of play provides a strong starting point to extend their mathematical thinking. Many young children often demonstrate repeated patterns of play, known as schemas, which can often provide a foundation to build on mathematical ideas and thinking. These could include positioning- exploring and composing with different arrangements, lining up objects or putting them in groups or enveloping- hiding themselves or exploring with filling and emptying containers.
Practitioners are interested and responsive to children’s thoughts and ideas and are able to support and extend children’s mathematical thinking. Sensitive adults value children’s ideas, support mathematical exploration and encourage dialogue that shares their discoveries and solutions and scaffolds the children’s thinking.
We work with parents to build on experiences of their home environment and children’s interests. Collaboration between parents and practitioners helps to develop understanding of the child’s mathematical knowledge.
A young child’s daily life offers many opportunities to experience number, shape, sorting and matching, for example, helping to set places at the table or helping to sort the washing, e.g. matching patterns on socks or sizes.
Hearing mathematical language is imperative for young children. It is important for adults to model appropriate mathematical language in purposeful contexts, commenting on children’s thinking and ideas, using of open ended questions, in order for children to begin to make connections and experiment with some of the new vocabulary they hear.
We use a range of books, stories and rhymes to introduce children to new mathematical concepts and vocabulary. These stories and rhymes are repeated, allowing children to become familiar with them. They are often accompanied by props or resources that can be handled and investigated.
Please find our Maths Progression document below, along with our Number Rhyme Document:
We incorporate maths opportunities into our daily routines. These are some of the ways we do this:
Welcome times – commenting on how many friends are in the group (not expecting the children to count accurately) adults commenting on number names and quantity- ‘lots’ ‘few’
Snack times- children giving out milk to their friends, counting how many cups/plates are needed, one to one correspondence, commenting on the number of grapes, etc. How many are left? more/less.
Lunch time- children helping to set the table- developing one to one correspondence, counting how many cups/plates are needed, counting items of food/ spoonful’s, comparing amounts.
Nappy changing- talk to the child about the order you do things- first I need to take your dirty nappy off, then…., next I need to….. talk about how many items of clothes e.g.: one pair of trousers, 2 socks, 2 shoes, etc.
Going outside- talking about how many items of clothes e.g.: 2 wellies, 1 coat, 2 gloves, etc
Tidy up times- sorting, grouping, matching, quantity
Subitising
In our nursery we provide lots of opportunities for children to develop their subitsing skills. Subitising is being able to visually see a number of objects instantly without needing to count them out one at a time. Subitising helps children to see, solve, and manipulate numbers in their head. This develops their number sense and helps them master key calculation strategies at an early stage.
We use different number patterns and games to support children’s understanding of numbers and help them recognise how ‘many’ each arrangement is without the need to count.
A parents guide to subitising can be found below, along with a link to some information from BBC Bitesize:
