Research School Network: Early Maths: making every opportunity count Early Years Maths

Ruth Coleman, Head Teacher at Highfield Nursery School Ipswich, the newly appointed East of England Early Years Stronger Practice Hub, reflects on supporting Maths in the Early Years.

Young children are naturally curious about the world around them. They notice small differences and patterns when as adults in a busy world, we sometimes don’t. Children will also use mathematical concepts within their play – this may be sorting objects, solving everyday problems or understanding time and sharing with their friends. This curiosity also supports thinking skills and problem solving.

Practitioners often say to me ​‘I can’t do maths’ or ​‘I’m not very good at maths’ and this seems to be a sticking point with many practitioners feeling confident in developing maths within their settings. The EEF guide Improving Mathematics in the Early Years and Key Stage 1 is a great starting point.

How do children typically learn mathematics?

1. It is extremely important that practitioners know their children well. The key person system in Early Years lends itself well to this as practitioners have a small group of children they support throughout their time at nursery.

2. Early Years settings also have a culture of developing curiosity, sustained shared thinking and problem solving the everyday activities.

3. Practitioners then need to provide opportunities to engage in appropriate, cognitively challenging activities.

Opportunities for mathematics everyday

There should be opportunities for children to learn about mathematics throughout each day. This can be built into routines (how many cups do we need for snack today?) and through child adult interactions, such as sharing books, puzzles, number songs, rhymes and games. Using story books is particularly effective. At Highfield Nursery School, we share a Story Curriculum and link maths activities to the stories we are sharing. For example, when reading Peter Rabbit, we would sing 5 currant buns, as Mrs Rabbit goes to the bakers to buy currant buns for her family. The children make salt dough currant buns, have real pennies to buy currant buns then sing the song together. We develop a strong understanding of the ​‘fiveness of 5’ and use manipulatives to support this. We may also plan to sort and group vegetables – by size, colour or whether they grow above or below the ground. These activities are part of the planning and will be supported by child-initiated learning and incidental teachable moments throughout the day. Practitioners can take the opportunity to reinforce mathematical vocabulary throughout the day, for example using ordinal numbers during stories such as Father Christmas Needs a Wee or the story of the first Lunar New Year and incidental moments, such as the order children are standing in. Practitioners can also rephrase statements that are ambiguous, such as refining when a child uses ​‘big’ meaning ​‘tall’ when talking about the size of an Emperor penguin in The Emperors Egg. It is important children are encouraged to use mathematical language such as ​‘curved’, ​‘pointy’ or ​‘smaller than’ and this becomes part of everyday dialogue and is used. The skill of the practitioner is to decide how and when to introduce this language, for example, it may be better to introduce a shape and its properties gradually, rather than all the shapes at the same time. Practitioners and parents can work to reinforce the language over time ensuring a consistent approach. As early years practitioners, we are experts at being attuned and responsive to the children in our class/​setting, their behaviours and their motivations. We can use this knowledge and skill to highlight mathematics across the day in meaningful ways.