Jun 3, 2025
Here's some teaching strategies we use to support children to learn about maths. These are easy for the whole family to do at home too!
- Plan ways to incorporate number and number patterns within waiata, chants, sāsā, haka, dance, and movement, e.g. counting the beat, clapping rhythms or counting-in ‘tahi, rua, toru, whā’ to start waiata.
- Identify and build on number-related experiences in the setting, such as: action songs, books, sand, and water play; counting as part of everyday tasks like preparing paints (how many jars?), and cooking and measuring ingredients.
- When appropriate, model how numbers can be organised (structured) in different ways using materials related to children’s play interests, e.g. group objects in pairs or place them in matching lines. Draw attention to these ‘structures’, e.g. “Oh, the buckets and spades are in pairs.”
- Pose questions and wonderings to help children use number or measurement when developing working theories, e.g. “I wonder which plant had the bigger seed?”
- Posing questions related to number, e.g: How many — e hia? (quantifying); Which has more? (comparing); Which is bigger — he aha te mea nui? (measuring), encourages mokopuna to use number in purposeful ways.
- Highlight number patterns within shared experiences, e.g. help mokopuna organise themselves into pairs for excursions, giving two poi to each person, or clapping to identity beats in a dance.
- Provide experiences that illustrate pattern regularity, repetition and structure in different modes, e.g. visual patterns in natural materials, art, puzzles and clothing; sound patterns in waiata, drumming, clapping and chants; or movement patterns in dance, daily routines and action songs.
- Model being playful with patterns, e.g. when grouping or sequencing objects according to size or colour, suggest regrouping according to an unexpected feature, e.g. texture.
- Create provocations that encourage children to pose problems and generate and refine working theories, such as displaying unfinished weaving that invites children to continue, change or complete the pattern. To provoke curiosity, provide images of tall or patterned buildings near the block area, or display lavalava/pareu/sarong to create interest in the art of stencil painting.
- Support mokopuna to adapt resources to suit their play purposes, e.g. cutting out, folding, pulling apart, joining. Use scaffolding to support children’s thinking, e.g. fold a blanket in half and invite a child to do the next fold.
information from - https://kowhiti-whakapae.education.govt.nz/maths
