Maths, Nursery

There are three broad areas of learning in maths. Every opportunity is taken during the Nursery day to develop children's maths skills for example through talking about the shape of everyday objects or counting the wheels on a trke.

Numbers as Labels and for counting - children will learn to:

  • Show curiosity about numbers by offering comments or asking questions
  • Use some number names accurately in play
  • Recognise groups with one, two or three objects
  • Use some number names and number language spontaneously
  • Sometimes match number and quantity correctly

Calculating - children will learn to:

  • Show an interest in number problems
  • Separate a group of three or four objects in different ways, beginning to recognise that the total is still the same
  • Compare two groups of objects, saying when they have the same number

Shape, Space and Measures - children will learn to:

  • Use shapes appropriately for tasks
  • Show an interest in shape and space by playing with shapes or making arrangements with objects
  • Observe and use positional language.
  • Show awareness of similarities in shapes in the environment.
  • Begin to talk about the shapes of everyday objects.
  • Show interest in shape by sustained construction activity or by talking about shapes or arrangements.
  • Are beginning to understand 'bigger than' and 'enough'

Topic Overview
Term 1

  • Build number concepts so that children start to ascribe meaning to numbers in terms of what they represent and how numbers relate to each other.
  • Children engage in logic and reasoning discussions that develop their understanding of the relationships between numbers.
  • Children experience numbers concretely and in songs, rhymes and games and relate this to numerals.
  • Children make patterns in a variety of ways.
  • Children begin to use mathematical names for shapes and identify them in their surroundings

Term2

  • Children continue to strengthen their number concepts through a variety of experiences.
  • Children develop the skill of conservation of number – the number within a set remains the same even when we move them around.
  • Children begin to match numbers to actual quantities.
  • Children make repeating patterns and reason in terms of what comes next and why.
  • Children begin to use positional language to describe locations and orientations.
  • Children begin to use language that relates to properties of shapes e.g. corners.

Term 3

  • Children continue to strengthen their number concepts through a variety of experiences.
  • Children experience the relationships between numbers (e.g. 5 is 1 less than / smaller than 6) and can use this to order numbers.
  • Children use counting to solve simple verbal problems – building their concepts of what it means to add and subtract and what happens to quantities and numbers when we do so.
  • Children continue to develop their sense of pattern and begin to see a pattern in the number system.
  • Children apply their understanding of shape and space, for example, knowing that they need one flat shape and one that is pointy when completing a puzzle.