Category Archives: Numeracy

Let’s count with Bookbug!

Today Bookbug came to visit! Bookbug knew we have been taking part in Maths Week Scotland here at Cart Mill and wanted to introduce us to number songs and rhymes.
BookBug brought his box filled with wonderful visual aids, puppets and books to help us have fun with our numeracy and maths skills through our songs and rhymes.

We started off by singing our welcome song to warm up all our voices.
We sang our number songs next such as 1,2,3,4,5 and 5 little peas. These songs teach us to count forwards in sequence.
We then sang songs such as 5 little ducks and 5 fat sausages to help us practice counting backwards in sequence. Ours songs also introduced us to early mathematical concepts such as adding and subtracting.

Then the stretchy Lycra came out and the puppets were bouncing and jumping up and down! We were using our listening skills, hand-eye co-ordination as well as numeracy and rhyming skills.

We all enjoyed singing number songs with Bookbug.

Numbers are all around us. Songs and rhymes are a fantastic way for us to learn and develop our numeracy and mathematical skills. What number songs can you sing at home?

Maths Week Scotland in the Discovery

This week is Maths Week Scotland. The children in the Discovery room are showing off their number recognition skills.

“We can match the pebbles with the numbers”


They decided to use our loose parts box to match the parts with the numbers eg. “It’s number 7, we can use 7 pebbles”

”what about sea shells, 1,2…6,7”

Loose parts are not just shells and pebbles, they are open ended resources meaning they can be used for anything, counting, sorting, making patterns, transient art. The list goes on.


The children then decided to sort the numbers in order from 1-9, they worked together to swap them round until in the right order.

“Put the 5 next to 4 and 7”

”Number 3 is upside down”

Flapjack fun!

Today the children in the toddlers had so much fun making yummy, sticky flapjacks! We did lots of measuring, weighing, melting, greasing and mixing to make the perfect consistency. This morning it turned out a little bit dry, so we put our thinking caps on… how do we make it stickier? The answer of course, was more sticky syrup!! We added some extra tablespoons of syrup to see if it would change the texture as it  was “too crumbly” and “crunchy”the first time, and it turned out just right. Well done guys! See if you can spot the difference.

We can’t wait to see what the children decide to make next from their book of baking ideas. Stay tuned!!