Students make a big splash at the BSB Summer Fair splash at the ...

Maths Activities
for the Foundation
Stage Child
Many parents ask what they can do at home to help
their child with maths. The answer is simpler than
you might think. Foundation aged children respond
best when learning is embedded in their play.
Just like at school taking a play-based approach to
teaching your child mathematics at home will make
their learning fun and much more effective than
more static approaches. Here are some activities
you might want to try:
Foundation Parent Workshops:
The Learning Community
Foundation Stage teachers shared some of their
great ideas for learning activities that parents
can do at home during a parents’ workshop held
on the morning of Thursday 21st May. There was
a great turnout but we also understand that
not everyone can attend a morning session so
handouts from the workshop were emailed to all
Foundation Stage families.
During the workshop Deanna Beggs (Reception
Teacher Pipera Site) guided parents through the
understanding of how important listening and
speaking skills are to later reading and writing,
whilst Gina d’Entremont (Preschool Teacher
Gafencu Site) helped parents to understand the
importance of sorting their washing with their
6
• Count cars, animals, houses, people, signs
while driving or walking
• Identify numerals in the everyday world: on
license plates, food packages, etc.
• Provide opportunities for one-to-one
correspondence: setting the table, matching
socks
• Identify shapes in the everyday world: an ice
cream cone is a sphere and a cone, a yield sign
is a triangle
• Practice a variety of counting rhymes that are
available on the internet
• Use vocabulary related to quantity, size, shape,
measurement
• Allow opportunities for students to explore
capacity: provide various sized containers to fill
and empty in the bathtub; allow your child to
measure ingredients when you are cooking
Parents join our learning community by participating in the Foundation Stage workshop.
child, and other great mathematics activities. We
laughed during the workshop, listened intently
and tried to remember when we learnt to read and
write.
Most of us can remember handwriting practice
but not truly learning to read or write. Please do
share with us some of your memories of this.
Since the workshop, I have remembered being
taken to my brother’s class (two year’s older
than me) and shown his handwriting with the
question ‘Why can’t you write like this?’ Oh the
effects of early labeling – ‘Angela the girl with bad
handwriting’, although I also remember the health
visitor telling me that my feet would win a ‘foot
beauty competition’ if such a thing existed – so I
Visit the BSB website at www.britishschool.ro
• Talk about things that are heavy and light: show
how a scale is used when measuring body
weight or buying produce at the market
• Talk about future events, create a countdown on
the calendar, discuss past events: what came
first, next, last
• Provide opportunities to order objects by size,
length, height, weight
• Provide shape & space resources such as
puzzles, blocks, shape matching games, etc.
• Point out patterns in the everyday world: on
animals, fabrics
• Create patterns together using materials found
around the house: buttons, coins
• Use positional terms such as on top, under,
below, behind, beside, left, right
• Identify symmetry in the everyday world like
body parts
Ms Gina d’Entremont,
Foundation Stage Maths Coordinator
Deanna Beggs shares her ideas on Communication,
Language and Literacy at Foundation Stage Parents
Workshop.
became ‘Angela with the lovely feet and the bad
handwriting’. I am definitely digressing here….
I would like to thank you all for inviting us to be
partners with you in your child’s education and
to draw your attention to a quote that was shared
at the workshop “A parent’s qualifications or job
are less of a factor in the child’s progress than
the parent’s desire to help the child interpret
their environment.” Kathy Sylva, Professor of
Educational Psychology and member of the EPPE
team (Effective Provision of Pre-School Education
Project).
Angela Harvey
Head of Foundation Stage