numeracy and mathematics – Page 2

Floating And Sinking

We would like to share an activity to try at home which involves the fun of water play alongside some science learning.

• Collect a selection of toys and other suitable objects which will not be damaged by being put in water. Put some water in a basin, a bucket or a sink.
• Encourage your child initially to make predictions about whether the objects will float or sink then get them to test their theories.
• Discuss where the toys sit in the water – are at the top or the bottom of the basin? Discuss with them why they think the objects floated or sunk.
• Use the terms ‘float’ and sink’ to help the children use the correct vocabulary.
• Fruit like apples and oranges can give surprising results. If you have an orange, try testing it with the peel on then peel it and try it again.
• The children can then sort the objects into a group that floats and a group that sinks. Help them to count how many are in each group and discuss which group has more.

We hope that you can have fun with a little floating and sinking. We would love to hear how you get on with this activity.

Dinosaur Measuring

With so many children showing great interest in dinosaurs, we talked about how big they were compared to us as children and adults then how big they might have been compared to the Nursery corridor or the playground. Once some serious measuring had been done, we laid this paper out on the playground to help us appreciate just how huge dinosaurs were which certainly made everyone think.

Growing Confidence

Confidence in the kitchen is growing in our children as they increasingly prepare foods and enjoy baking which provides great opportunities to develop their skills in Numeracy and Mathematics as well as Sciences and Technologies. This little group recently made chocolate cornflake cakes, showing great independence and responsibility.

Learning At Annan Academy

Having visited the Music Department at Annan Academy several times and had exciting visits in Nursery from a Science teacher and STEM Ambassadors, we were delighted to be able to arrange a visit by some of the Raindrop Room to the Technical Department at Annan Academy towards the end of last term. This was a fantastic opportunity for our children to experience model making at a whole new level and to learn how to safely use tools that we do not normally provide in Nursery.
Mr. Paul Johnston, Principal Teacher of Technical Education, and several of his senior pupils modelled how to use a range of tools then showed great patience to help our children make spinning tops. Each child used a ruler to mark the centre of their wood and donned safety goggles as the senior pupils made a hole in it for them. Mr. Johnston and his pupils showed great patience to teach our children how to hold the wood safely and supported them to use the electric sander. We were so proud of our children who showed super listening skills and concentration to be able to use the sander safely.
Once the spinning tops were complete, the children enjoyed using the coloured pencils to decorate their tops and some were even supported to sharpen the pencils with Mr. Johnston’s tools.
This was a fantastic opportunity for our children, experiencing learning in Numeracy and Mathematics, Technologies and Health and Wellbeing and we greatly appreciate the kindness and patience of Mr. Johnston and his pupils on this visit. Thank you also for the off cuts of wood which are being put to good use in Nursery. We have loved our visits to Annan Academy and hope that we can continue to learn from you in the future.

Hecklegirth Post Office

With families busy posting cards and parcels towards the end of term, the children in the Rainbow Room thought it would be a good idea to have a post office in their role play area. As you can see, this was a popular choice and there were lots of opportunities to develop learning in Numeracy and Mathematics as we talked about the size and weight of parcels with the use of scales, the different shapes of stamps on our letters, the use of money and counting of everything that was going in the post. What a busy post office we had!

Healthy And Tasty

When Yvonne and Louise, from the Health Improvement Team, visited us last month for an informal taster and information session, they left some healthy recipes for us to try so this little group decided to experiment with the flapjack recipe.
Careful counting and measuring help to develop the children’s skills in Numeracy and Mathematics while their discussions, observation and use of the oven develop learning in Sciences and Technologies. The end result of some fun learning was a delicious smell which was matched by a gorgeous tasting session. Thank you to Yvonne and Louise for a super healthy recipe. This is one that we may use again.

Learning With Chocolate

The children in the Rainbow Room have been making chocolate shapes to sell as a little enterprise project. Initially a group of children went shopping to buy the ingredients, helping them to understand the purpose of money. Back at Nursery, discussions about what would happen when we put chocolate in the microwave then the fridge provided the opportunity to develop the children’s science learning and they also used numeracy skills to count the squares of chocolate when preparing their chocolate shapes. Of course there was also the opportunity for a little tasting as some of the children enjoyed the age old tradition of “cleaning” the bowl at the end.
We can certainly recommend the chocolate shapes to anyone who has a little money to spare – at 50p a bag we think that they are a tasty buy so watch out for the children’s basket of shapes in Nursery.

Worm Maths

Children are often intrigued by the minibeasts they see outdoors as part of their play and finding a worm can arouse great curiosity. Some of the children in the Rainbow Room talked about where worms live and how we could find them. They wondered how many might live in their garden so decided to do a little survey. As you can see, they were enthusiastic to do lots of digging to find worms and developed their Maths skills by measuring them to find the shortest and longest and then counted them each day to record on a graph. What great little investigative scientists they were and it was great to see how gentle all the children were with the worms that they found.

Shape Detectives

What better way to learn about shapes than to go out and find some in our own environment? A group from the Rainbow Room went on a shape hunt in the school’s nature area and were excited to find lots of examples of shapes in the real world. They even took the photos themselves and we think that they did a good job as “detective photographers”. Great work finding all these shapes and more. We think that your photos are super and have made them into a display in the Maths area of the Rainbow Room.

Pumpkin Investigation

The Raindrop Room children investigated the contents of a pumpkin last week as they planned to decorate it for Hallowe’en. With various options of facial features, the children used tally marks to have their say about their preferences then took turns to empty the pumpkin contents and discuss their findings before their pumpkin was carved.