I want to try to keep our Maths basket going this year as it has become such a great way of encouraging maths practice. It sits in the main lounge area so is always in line of sight which means the kids sometimes dig in it to find something to do and I often refer to it for a quick Maths morning activity.
So this is what our basket looks like at the moment (there are more activities for my youngest in the basket because at the moment his older sister is very involved in “teaching him maths”. They both seem to love this, and I think it is brilliant for her as she is explaining concepts and often while she is explaining she thinks of something and that leads to a whole other maths session for her).
So what’s included
Our BUY IT RIGHT game. This game is perfect for the maths basket because you can play it on three different levels – Just Pounds, Just pence or combination of Pounds and Pence. So we tend to play it with my youngest on one of the first two levels and then play it with my oldest on the hardest level. Can not say enough good things about this game, we love it.
Mathlink Cubes Set – we are using this quite a bit with my youngest with addition of bigger numbers and with some basic times table activities.
As part of the times table activities we are currently doing with my son we have some copies of the Activity Village Batty Multiplication game in the box (they are inside our write and wipe pockets as it means we can scribble over the bats if we want to write a sum out and it also just prevents the pages from getting scrunched up).
Also from Activity Village some skip counting cards, for some times table activities.
Then as always some loop cards – my kids really enjoy practicing maths with the loop cards so I keep printing out new versions for them. This time I actually used the Editable version of Twinkl’s Number Bond’s to 100 Loop cards and change the sums to make them a bit more difficult. We are using it as a way of speeding up my daughter’s addition and it really is working.
Some Tally Mark Dominoes and the Calculations to 20 Matching star cards. Both great for reenforcing some basic addition for my son. Also a 2, 5 and 10 times table matching cards (all the Twinkl resources mentioned are part of their paid for Classic collection).
And as always some dice and bean bags for the impromptu maths throwing games that my two often come up with. I have also left our Dice Games for Kids book in the basket, just to give both the kids and I some new ideas for dice games.
I will try and give regular updates of the different games, cards and activities that we include our Maths Basket.
). Squeezing the paint out is quite a work-out for the kids so if they are doing more than one picture they might need a little break in between. And make sure you leave the paint to dry out properly as it does smudge when still wet – we left ours to dry overnight.
ofamily learning together 