The children had the opportunity to develop their numeracy and maths skills using the UHI Early Years Maths Tales Pack, based on the story Puffin Peter by Petr Horacek, which we recently enjoyed reading together at story time.

The STEM resources enabled the children to explore measuring and sorting activities while working collaboratively as a group. Toy animals representing the characters from the book were used for estimating, comparing and ordering by length, height and weight.

‘I think the whale is longer.’

‘Let’s check to see.’

‘I guessed right.’

‘The parrot is the tallest one.’

 

The children particularly enjoyed using a two-pan balance alongside non-standard units (multilink cubes) to investigate and compare the weight of each toy animal.

‘It’s like a seesaw.’

‘The whale is heavy.’

‘Can you help me count?’

 

They also used magnifying glasses to closely observe each animal’s features and were excited to be blindfolded while guessing the animal using only their sense of touch.

‘I can see bumps on the whale.’

‘Is it the parrot?’

‘It feels like the puffin.’

 

The final activity involved using sorting rings to group the animals according to specific characteristics such as wings, webbed feet, beaks and tails.

‘The whale can’t fly.’

‘The puffin has a beak so it goes inside the circle.’

‘Let’s do tails now.’

 

The Maths Tales Pack is a fantastic resource that supports children in developing and applying a wide range of maths skills through engaging, hands-on learning experiences.