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Tips for doing maths at home#
You can support your tamaiti to learn using maths at home by:
- having a positive attitude to maths
- drawing attention to shapes, patterns, and numbers in their everyday environment
- pointing out the maths in everyday situations
- taking opportunities to introduce mathematical language
- choosing songs about numbers, counting, or words
- encouraging them to use mathematical ideas in different places and cultural contexts.
Maths can be found and supported in every area of play. Talk about how puzzles fit together, blocks of different shapes and sizes, and the patterns in kete | baskets, tapa cloths, kōwhaiwhai, and whāriki | mats. These are opportunities to introduce maths concepts like sequence and patterns.
Adding different sized cups and containers to water play gives your tamaiti hands-on experiences with maths ideas like capacity and volume.
Always be aware that infants and toddlers like to mouth objects so keep a close eye on them around small and pointy objects.
Ideas for learning about maths
Every day there are plenty of chances for tamariki to learn about maths.
- Counting, for example dogs in the street or red cars that pass.
- Singing number songs and rhymes, for example in the bath or in the car.
- Identifying numbers, for example on letter boxes, number plates, or road signs.
- Sorting, classifying objects, for example colours, metal, wood, or plastic.
- Measuring, for example length of footsteps, weight of pumpkins, the height of your tamaiti or capacity of a water jug.
- Comparing sizes, for example stones, shells, houses, or animals.
- Identifying shapes, for example round road signs or square windows.
- Identifying patterns within kōwhaiwhai and carvings.
- Experiencing spatial awareness, for example going through tunnels, or being up high, inside, under, on top of a fort or large box.
Exploring maths together
Maths learning in the home
Kei waho hoki te pāngarau
Kei roto i te kāinga te akoranga pāngarau
How many socks?
See how an everyday item (socks) can be a focus for play and learning and how you can join in play and contribute to learning.
Learning with maths#
Maths includes:
- counting
- sorting
- matching
- measuring
- estimating
- pattern-making
- sequencing – for example large to small
- comparing items
- size
- colours
- weight
- volume, and much more.
Maths can help your tamaiti | child to:
- learn to count, weigh, and measure
- learn to analyse and solve problems
- develop hand-eye coordination and muscles
- understand shapes, sizes, and patterns
- solve problems, estimate, predict, compare, classify, and notice differences and similarities.
