• Number hunt- noticing numbers in our environment e.g. on doors, car number plates, telephone keypad.
• Using rulers and tape measures to measure the height/length of objects in the home.
• Counting everyday objects e.g. pairs of socks in the washing basket, number of cars passed on your journey to school.
• Weighing ingredients for cooking in the kitchen and doubling/halving ingredients.
• Counting and budgeting with pocket money.
• Ordering days of the week/months of the year, plotting birthdays on the calendar.
• Drawing simple maps of your journey to school, trip to the zoo etc.
• Using a variety of mathematical words in everyday contexts e.g. more than, bigger, less than, take away, subtract, difference etc.

For children to succeed in maths, they need to learn a range of strategies for calculating and learn how to apply these to the problem in hand. The foundation on which these skills are built is quick recall of mental maths facts. When children are secure in their mental maths knowledge, their all important confidence improves, allowing them to take on new concepts and ideas more readily. As such, at Kingshurst we view mental maths as very important in every child’s development. However, we also know that finding ways to make learning these facts fun can be tricky. This guide aims to give you a variety of tips, tricks and games which you can try out at home to make the challenge of learning essential number facts a fun and exciting prospect for the whole family.