We started Maths Basket’s last year and they have proved successful with the kids and very useful for me so we are continuing with them this year.  The Maths Basket is a combination of Maths activities that I leave (in a basket) in our main living area as a way of encouraging more Maths practice. (And it also really helps me on those days when I have not planned anything, I just have a quick look in the basket and we take something out to do together).  I normally have a combination of games, loop cards, dice and anything that is linked to current Maths themes (eg my youngest is currently working on times tables so we make sure to include times table activities).

If you want to see what we have included in our past Maths baskets you can look here – Maths Basket, Maths basket Jan/ feb 2018.

I have included our Multiple Representation Dice set and our Even Steven’s odd game from Learning Resources.  I am a huge fan of dice activities and I love both of these.  The Multiple Representation Dice set is a foam set of dice with different visual representations of the numbers from 0 to 20.  My son really likes the dice and we have been using them for lots of basic maths – creating addition and subtraction sums.

He is also constantly using them to create patterns.

Even Steven’s Odd Game is a fast paced dice game which the whole family plays but I have really included it for my daughter as it encourages her to think quickly and the harder dice challenge cards are perfect for her.

I also included the Dice Tower which is really a fun activity for my son,  He loves rolling the dice down the tower, it turns any boring maths practice into something fun and he normally ends up giggling and laughing while he is doing his maths.

The Loop cards (or dominoes) are all from Twinkl Resources (all the Loop cards are part of their paid for Classic membership).  Loop cards are without a doubt one of my daughter’s prefered ways of practicing Maths.  She will happily sit and do Loop card set after Loop card set without complaining.  With the Loop cards we often add new sets as the month progresses and we often bring back Loop cards that we have already used (Because we use our loop cards so much and because I am planning on using the same cards for both kids I print ours out on card).

Currently we have – subtraction to 20 (for my son), telling time to 5 minute Loop cards  and larger place value sets – both of these – 5 Digit place value loop cards and the 6,7,8 digit place value loop set.

Also keeping our decimal theme going (my daughter) I have included these – Adding decimals

and this great calendar set.  All of the Loop card sets are great for practicing but I must admit that I love this calendar set – it includes questions like – the number of months in a year and a half, the number of days in a fortnight, the number of hours in three days, the season in which we find January and so much more.  I completely stumbled upon this Loop card set while I was looking for some new place value ones and I LOVE IT.

My son is all about times tables at the moment so we are sticking with our skip counting cards and the times table folding cards both from Activity Village (we have done 10x, 2x and 5x  – but still practicing them when they are all mixed up – and are now moving onto 11x – because he figured out the pattern himself and the 3x).

We are also sticking with the Multiplication Bump game although we are mixing up the themes – we have printed out some of the Easter chicks, the football themed pages and the new Spring themed pages.

I have uploaded a video showing all the items in the Maths Basket to our facebook page