Today is National Numeracy Day, a yearly event aimed at improving numeracy and maths skills, both for adults and children. We have gathered together some fun activities to do with your kids, to help make maths and numbers less intimidating.
Cooking or baking
Cooking or baking together is a great way to support numeracy and literacy with our kids. Encouraging them to read recipes out loud can help their reading and speech skills, and counting out eggs, or using scales to measure out ingredients can help them get comfortable with numbers while having fun. And at the end – there’s something delicious to eat!
Fraction flowers
Quick and easy to make with poster paints and paper plates. Paint a coloured circle in the centre as shown, divide each plate into a different number of fractions, then cut out the fractions. Kids can play about with making a complete circle again using different fractions, e.g with one half and two quarters, or two quarters and three sixths. Making numbers visual like this can help children to understand them.
Number jump / hop
Combining numbers with exercise for a double dose of goodness! If you have a trampoline, grab a bag of balloons and some string and turn it into a quick and easy game of number recognition. Write a number on each of the balloons and secure them to each post of the trampoline. Call out a number and ask your child to bounce up and tap it!
No trampoline? Try chalking the numbers on the ground in big circles for them to jump to. Call a number and ask them to jump into the circle that has that number in it. Muddle the numbers up out of order to help challenge them.
