Maths Party

Celebrate the curious, creative and collaborative nature of mathematics by holding a MATHS PARTY!

Families are invited to enjoy playful early maths activities with their children with games, fun counting, playful conversations and fascinating things to think about. And whats more,  and each child leaves with a party bag in hand! An ingenious, non intrusive way that can help schools promote reciprocal partnerships with families and one that helps parents understand how to engage in mathematical play!

PARENTAL ENGAGEMENT & INVOLVEMENT, FAMILY LEARNING and LEARNING AT HOME 

We know that families influence children’s earliest development of maths. Promoting and supporting parent-child math interactions can make a meaningful difference, especially with math-anxious parents*. Here's a way to engage families in mathematical play - HOST A MATHS PARTY! 

Quality family time, building early numerical skills without stress. An ideal opportunity to support parents to become meaningfully and actively engaged with their child's learning.

For a bespoke maths party for your Nursery, Primary School or community group please contact hello@fluencywithnumbers.com 

Host your own DIY MATHS PARTY... Here's how:

Want to run a family math night at your school or library? You’ve come to the right place! You can run this event on the cheap, using just dice, printouts of our PDFs,  and a few other maths manipulatives you’re likely to have in the classroom. You can purchase some of our other games and TOOLKITS as well, but you don’t have to if you don’t have the budget.

Research on interventions to promote parental involvement in their children‟s education documents a range of approaches, including parent training programs and initiatives to enhance home school links (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003). While there is widespread agreement in the literature that students' learning is maximised when strong educational partnerships between home and school exist (e.g., Groves, Mousley & Forgasz, 2006; Stephens & Steinle, 2005; Anthony & Walshaw, 2007), the nature of these partnerships, particularly in the area of mathematics education, is not extensively documented.

A wide-range of research and evidence have been consulted to formulate our MATHS PARTIES and PARTY BAGS. We've transformed the latest advice of the world's best researchers of mathematics education into practical, easy to replicate maths fact fluency ideas for use at HOME. Here you'll find a fusion of theory, experiences and practical support that I share in at the You raise children who LOVE ❤️ NUMBERS and MATHS! Our Maths Parties replace isolated and traditional maths homework with SOCIAL MATHS PLAY. 

We’re on a mission to give all families playful, hands-on, experiences of maths that they can do together – we want everyone to enjoy and feel positive about maths!

Step 1: Download the SPOTS & DOTS TOOLKIT. Choose which games you'd like to run at your event. I like to include games that use the five/ ten frame and a number path too. 

Recently, results from several studies suggested that playing board games is beneficial for early numerical development of preschoolers (Elofsson, Gustafson, Samuelsson, & Träff, 2016; Laski & Siegler, 2014; Ramani & Siegler, 2008; Siegler & Ramani, 2008).

You'll find LOTS of maths games in our TOOLKIT. Favourites include... 

Here I'm sharing  3 of my ALL TIME  favourite maths games that I ALWAYS play at a Maths Party (and a wee bit of the theory behind them) that I share with children and families during our MATHS PARTIES.  All of the games promote RICH  maths talk  between  grown-ups and their children.

Playing board games with traditional NUMBER DICE (with dot faces numbered from one to six) was found to be significantly more effective in fostering children’s numerical development. In particular, this held for counting skills as well as for the conceptual subitising ability (i.e., recognising and using structures), both of which were previously observed to be associated with (later) mathematical competencies (counting: e.g., Jordan et al., 2010; Krajewski & Schneider, 2009; Nguyen et al. 2016; conceptual subitizing: Lüken, 2012; Mulligan & Mitchelmore 2009; Obersteiner et al., 2014). 

Shake 5/ 10 and SPILL

LINEAR GAMES

The number line is a powerful tool to present numerical information as numbers are ordered in increasing magnitude from left to right (in Western cultures), and the distance between numbers directly reflects their magnitude relation. Children’s performance on number line tasks, where typically children are asked to place numbers in the correct location on the number line, is related to a range of important early numerical skills, which include their ability to recall numbers, compare numbers(e.g., is two bigger than five?), and carry out arithmetic. 

Several studies have investigated whether playing a linear number board game improves children’s early numerical skills. Siegler and Ramani (2008) 

 Interestingly, the linear presentation of numbers in a board game appears crucial to improving numerical skills, as when the same game in a linear format was compared to a circular format, the linear format was significantly better for improving number skills. Linear board games have also been found to improve a range of other numerical skills in low-income and middle-income preschoolers, including counting, identifying numbers, and comparing the magnitude of numbers. Linear board games show promise for decreasing gaps between low-income and high-income children as children with initially lower number knowledge show the greatest benefits from linear board games. What is particularly encouraging is that linear board games are both practical and effective within a classroom context. 

While most of the linear board games involve counting forward, recent research by Dr Francesco Sella, at Loughborough University, has highlighted how the ability to count backwards may reflect a more advanced understanding of counting.

 Accordingly, children develop a better understanding of number magnitude when they understand the relationship between set size and number words. For example, removing one item from a set means that the set size is reduced by one. The child can identify how many items are in this new set, if they move one along the number line. 

A linear board game, which encourages counting forward and backwards (i.e., bi-directional), may become an effective tool to improve early numerical skills.

Try these games that use the NUMBER TRACK:

NUMBER TRACK TREASURE 

TAKE AWAY TOWERS

Step 2: Make sure you have adequate space to run your party and volunteers to help with activities. Arrange food and drinks for families if you can.

Step 3: Promote your event, and encourage people to sign up or register) so you have a sense of how many people to expect.

Step 4: Host your maths party! And let me know how it went, and what other materials would have helped you to run it! Email me: hello@fluencywithnumbers.com

We believe that our DOTS & SPOTS TOOLKITS represents a powerful approach to introducing counting,numeracy, and mathematical thinking to kids in a playful and joyful way. We hope you and the children in your life love playing these games.

Love, Janey x

hello@fluencywithnumbers.com