How to help your child

The Maths curriculum encourages children to learn specific skills in each year group. Once they are confident in these skills we work with the children to broaden their understanding and apply these skills through real life problems, reasoning and investigations. We have put together a small list of ideas to help you further support your child at home. For more information or advice, please talk to your child’s Class Teacher.

Reception ideas

Notice numbers wherever you are and encourage children to say them out loud.

Play counting games and board games where children need to use a dice to count the number of steps they should go forwards.

Use the numbers to 20 and help your child to put them in the correct order

Look at 2D and 3D shapes around you and talk about their names.

Talk about and chant the days of the week. Ask questions e.g. If it’s Tuesday today, what day will it be tomorrow?

Use the words longer, shorter, heavier, lighter, thicker, thinner to compare things and encourage your child to do the same.

Year 1 ideas

Play counting games and notice numbers in your environment (e.g. house numbers) to help your child count, read and write numbers to 100.

Practise number bonds to 10 and 20 in every day life. (e.g. You have 6 grapes, how many more will you need to make 10?)

Use the words 1 more, 1 less, half and quarter at home.

Order the days of the week and months of the year.

Allow children to see the coins you are using to buy items when shopping so that they know the value of each coin.

Look at clocks to tell the time to o’clock and half past the hour.

Year 2 ideas

Play counting games where you count in steps of 10, 2, 5 and 3. This will help children to become familiar with their times tables.

Children are expected to know their 10, 2 and 5 times tables by the end of Year 2 so get practising and be creative! Put the times table facts around the house, sing times table songs or surprise them with a times table question when they least expect it…

When you are dishing up dinner or dividing up a cake or pizza, use the fraction words quarter, half, three quarters and thirds.

If your child is confident in the value of the coins, they could have a go at making the right money for you to buy something small.

Look at clocks to tell the time. A lot of children find this very tricky to do themselves but the more you mention the time when they see a clock, the easier it will be for them to understand.

Year 3 ideas

Play counting games where you count in steps of 3, 4, 8, 50 and 100. This will help children become familiar with their times tables.

Children are expected to know their 10, 2, 5, 3, 4 and 8 times tables by the end of Year 3 so get practising and be creative! Put the times table facts around the house, sing times table songs or surprise them with a times table question when they least expect it…

Help your child add and subtract numbers to 1000 using columns (for more information on this, please see our calculations policy)

If you have a clock which uses Roman Numerals, allow the children to investigate this to help them tell the time to the nearest minute with a standard and Roman Numeral clock.

If you are cooking something or even just making some squash, allow your child to see the measurements you are using so they become familiar with ml, l, g, kg, mm, cm and m.

Year 4 ideas

Play counting games where your child can count backwards through zero into negative numbers.

Children are expected to know all their tables up to the 12 x 12 by the end of Year 4 so get practising and be creative! Put the times table facts around the house, sing times table songs or surprise them with a times table question when they least expect it…

When you are dishing up dinner or dividing up a cake or pizza, use the fraction words and allow children to see that 2/6 and 1/3 are actually the same.

When you are shopping ask children to compare the prices for you including decimals (e.g. This costs £4.50 and this costs £3.99, which is cheaper?)

Help your child multiply 2 or 3 digit numbers by 1 digit numbers by using columns (for more information on this, please see our calculations policy)

If you are cooking something or even just making some squash, talk to your child about how you would convert metric measurements e.g. I need 2 and a half litres of stock. How much would that be in millilitres?

Year 5 ideas

Play games with your child where they have to name all the prime numbers to 19. If you’re not sure of these, look them up and then display them somewhere the children will see them.

Continue to practise the times tables up to 12 x 12 and focus on the tables your child struggles with in particular.

Look at the temperature in your car/ at the petrol station, particularly when it is below 0 so children can understand negative numbers better.

Talk about percentages when you are shopping e.g. This is 25% off, that’s the same as a quarter.

If you are cooking something or even just making some squash, talk to your child about how you would roughly convert metric and imperial measures e.g. 1 pound is about 450 grams

Year 6 ideas

Continue to practise the times tables up to 12 x 12 and focus on the tables your child struggles with in particular.

Help your child to simplify fractions e.g. 21/33 is too complicated but both numbers are in the 3 times table so we could say 7/11 instead.

When you’re shopping or just at home, notice percentages and encourage your child to convert between fractions, decimals and percentages.

Try some missing number problems but use a letter for the missing number so it helps them to understand algebra e.g. 27 + y = 32. What is y?

If you come across pie charts or graphs in the newspaper or online, talk to your child about them and show them how you would understand the information the data is giving.

Use the vocabulary associated with circles e.g. radius, diameter, circumference