Ideas for helping with maths at home
As parents and carers you play a vital role in supporting your child's development of mathematical skills and understanding.
Finding opportunities for your child to practise and apply their mathematical understanding in a variety of practical ways at home and also when out and about would be very beneficial. For example, when shopping, measuring and cooking.
Below is a list (by no means exhaustive) of some of the ways maths can be used during your everyday lives.
Most importantly, have fun with Maths!
| Watching TV | Counting programmes |
| Telling the time | |
| Adding lengths of time e.g. one programme is 30 minutes and one is 60 minutes; how long altogether? | |
| Reading a TV guide | |
| Calculating durations of time e.g. the programme starts at 6.30 and last for 45 minutes, what time does it finish? | |
| Football (playing and watching matches) | Calculating lengths of time |
| Counting the scores | |
| Calculations based on league tables e.g. Millwall have 44 points and have played 44 games, how many games could they have won, drawn and lost? | |
| Shopping/cafes/restaurants | Adding and subtracting money |
| Comparing prices (most/least expensive) | |
| What could I afford with £10? | |
| Calculating change from £10 note | |
| Value for money (buy one get one free etc.) | |
| Swimming | Calculating distances/speed |
| Calculating time (in seconds and minutes) | |
| Cinema | Calculating time durations e.g. how long was the film if it started at this time? How much longer than this film? |
| Beach day out | Running on the beach e.g. how fast can they run? (time/distance) |
| Calculating distances | |
| Counting/sorting shells or pebbles | |
| Riding a bike | Calculating distance/speed |
| Park | Counting children |
| Comparing how many girls/boys/adults etc | |
| Adding and taking away children as they leave and arrive | |
| Sorting leaves/acorns/conkers/fir cones | |
| Comparing largest/smallest trees | |
| In the garden | Measure and record (table and graph form) how plants grow over time |
| Compare several plants | |
| In the kitchen | Measuring temperature/rainfall |
| Counting e.g. pasta shapes, tins, jars | |
| Converting measures | |
| Shapes/volume of packaging | |
| Ordering by weight/price/amount of fat | |
| Estimating | |
| More than/less than | |
| Fractions e.g. if I use half of the tin, how much will the leftovers weigh? | |
| Sorting washing | |
| Using calendars and diaries | |
| Out and about | Number plates e.g. calculating with the digits |
| Odd and even house numbers e.g. what number will be next? | |
| Shapes in the real world e.g. can you spot a rectangle/triangle/circle? | |
| Estimating and measuring distances using non-standard units e.g. how many steps from our house to the car/park/shop? | |
| Largest/smallest | |
| Counting and sorting cars by colour/make/model/age | |
| Train and bus timetables and calculating times | |
| At home | Talking about directions when walking around or playing with toy vehicles etc. e.g. forwards, backwards, straight on, turn left/right |
| Playing games - dominoes, snakes and ladders, Monopoly, bingo, Yahtzee, various card games | |
| Making models with building bricks, Lego, boxes etc. Talk about shape and position; count the number of similar shapes etc. |