Making Maths Count

Chris Smith

August 25, 2017 by Chris Smith No Comments

If you bump into a high school Maths teacher in a Nursery, you might assume that they’re lost or picking up their youngsters. But maybe, just maybe, they’ll be sharing the joy of Maths with enthusiastic little people! I’m invited, with minimal arm-twisting, by Mrs Rankin to pop along to a local nursery once a year to speak to groups of kids under 5 about “Maths”. And so we meet our first barrier- what even is Maths? I always start out by saying that it’s all about numbers, shapes and patterns. And everyone at this age LOVES these things. We do some number tricks (reminding myself that some of these guys won’t even recognise the number “7” so there’s lots of counting out loud going on). We play a game with twenty socks on a washing line involving (but never explicitly mentioning) multiples, exploring the patterns. Their wee jaws drop as we perform a card matching trick that relies on simple Maths. They clamber inside an elasticated band and I challenge them to move to form a three-sided shape (“what’s its name?”…I pretend not to know). Next up it’s a four-sided shape (“are there any others?” I probe).  On both of my last visits, they’ve volunteered the name of an eight-sided shape. I’m impressed so I introduce them to the mind-blowing Mobius Strip. I learn loads from trying to explain these most basic concepts from scratch, in language that is jargon-free. The cheers from the room at the end of the session and the nursery’s annual organisation of this visit make me think that I’m not the only one who leaves buzzing about Maths!

Chris Smith

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